The issue of Cocoa Produce Buying Companies (PBCs) adjusting their scales to cheat cocoa farmers of their due is not only sad but unconscionable.
A private broadcasting station’s latest investigative documentary ‘Missing Kilos’ exposed the stealing of cocoa beans by clerks in licenced cocoa buying companies of the country. The...
Ghana is set to commence payment of the new US$400 cocoa Living Income Differential tariff in October when the 2020/2021 crop season begins.
The LID tariff agreed in 2019 between the governments of Ghana and Ivory Coast and international cocoa traders and manufacturers is a measure hoped to help alleviate...
A software for purchasing and monitoring cocoa electronically is set to help drive the cash-lite agenda for financial inclusion in the country. Popularly called CocoaAsempa, the software has enhanced financial intermediation and inclusion amongst farmers and farmer groups.
There has indeed been some level of success with the mobile...
As part of efforts to increase cocoa productivity to over one million metric tonnes, the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has commenced a hand-pollination exercise across all production areas for the 2019/2020 season.
COCOBOD has therefore increased recruited and trained youth for the human-induced cross-fertilisation programme from 20,000 in the previous...
In a ceremony that complied with COVID-19 official meeting and social distancing guidelines, COCOBOD, Japan International Cooperation Agency, JICA, and other Development Finance Institutions have announced a US$600million credit facility for COCOBOD’s Productivity Enhancement Programmes (PEPs).
In November 2019, Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) including the African Development Bank (AfDB), Japan...
Ghanaian cocoa farmer cooperative, Kuapa Kooko, has lost 80 percent of its majority shares in British chocolate brand, Divine Chocolate, to a strategic investor. Kuapa Kooko Cooperative, which hitherto owned 45% majority shares in the company, would now hold only 20% ownership as Divine Chocolate Limited is sold to a...
The pioneering initiative to train the next generation of cocoa farmers, is expected to bring a significant contribution to the country’s cocoa production, as a total of over 12,000 youth have been trained to venture into cocoa farming and its related businesses, by the MASO programme, being undertaken by...
Ghana supplies 70% of all cocoa beans imported into Japan and cocoa is seen as one of the nation’s most essential import commodities
Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) and lenders have welcomed the first disbursement of US$200million from a syndicated loan facility to boost cocoa productivity in the world’s second-largest producer.
The...
The Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) said on Tuesday that its annual pre-export financing will be raised as usual through a syndicated loan, denying a report its usual lenders had declined to underwrite the risk.
Loan Pricing Corporation, a unit of financial data firm Refinitiv, reported last week that financing for...