Ghana aims to increase domestic processing of cocoa beans to 45% of its crop from a current 18% by 2006, Finance Minister Osafo Maafo said. "We want to implement this idea very fast," he told Reuters.

Ghana is the world's second largest cocoa producer after Ivory Coast. Its 2000 to 2001 crop is forecast at around 420,000 tonnes.

Industry sources say installed processing capacity stands at 95,000 tonnes of beans per year, which would be almost 23% of the expected 2000 to 2001 crop.

Swiss-based Barry Callebaut is building a 60,000-tonne processing plant in the port town of Tema, near the capital Accra. The plant is to become operational by July. Barry's plant will be the third cocoa processing plant in Ghana.

The country's largest processor is West African Mills Company in the second port town of Takoradi, near the border with Ivory Coast. It is a joint venture between Germany's Hosta Group of Companies and the Ghana Cocoa Board.

WAMCO increased its capacity from 50,000 to 70,000 tonnes in 2000.

The Cocoa Processing Company, a full subsidiary of the Cocobod, wholly owns the Portem cocoa processing plant in Tema. Its installed capacity is 25,000 tonnes of beans per year.

Portem has been on the list of companies to be sold off by the state for years. In 1995 a short list of potential foreign buyers was drawn up and forwarded to the presidency for approval. For reasons never made clear the privatisation process was halted.

Ghana in December elected John Kufuor as its new president, ending two decades of rule by Jerry Rawlings. Kufuor, a lawyer and businessman, holds liberal economic views. - Reuters