Ghana Cocoa Board, says it will maintain the producer price of cocoa despite suggestions by the IMF to reduce the prices to reflect changes in international cocoa prices.

According to IMF, the downward adjustment will help COCOBOD deal with its current funding gap of one billion Ghana cedis.

In its seventh and eighth review documents under the recently concluded External Credit Facility (ECF) Programme, the IMF says the gap has been due to government’s inability to reduce the producer prices paid to cocoa farmers at a time global prices of the crop have been falling.

The producer price of cocoa was increased by 11.76% in October 2016 to cover the 2016/2017 season. Since then, it has remained unchanged at seven thousand 600 cedis per tonne.

Within the same period, however, the price of cocoa on the international market suffered a tumultuous fall, dropping from an average of 2,500 dollars per tonne in November 2016 before ending that year at 2,287 dollars per tonne.

But in an interview on news and current affairs programme “Behind the News” Manager at the office of the CEO of COCOBOD, Fiifi Boafo said the prices will be maintained to discourage farmers from giving out their lands for other activities.