The Minority in Parliament on Thursday urged government to increase the producer price of cocoa to at least 9.5 million cedis a tonne to reflect the increase in the price of commodity in the world market. It said this would reduce the smuggling of the commodity and enable the nation to achieve maximum benefit from the slightly favourable price.

In a statement, Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the Minority Spokesman on Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs, said that the policy of paying farmers lower prices in the face of the booming world market prices led to the near collapse of the cocoa industry in the 1970s.

He said on 1 May 2000, the producer price was increased to 3.87 million cedis per tonne, representing 75.9 per cent of the then world market price of 5.1 million cedis (850 dollars per tone at 6,000 cedis to the dollar). Mr Asiedu Nketia said unfortunately since the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government took over it had, despite booming world market prices, failed to pay farmers their share of the world market price boom.

"As at 1 May 2001, the producer price of 4,384,000 cedis paid to farmers represented 69.6 per cent of the world market price of 6,300,000 per ton (900 dollars per tone at 7,000 cedis to the dollar) down from the almost 76 per cent paid in the year 2000. "Currently, as at 1 May 2002, the producer price is 6,200,000 per tone representing only 46 per cent of the world market price of 13,475,000 (1,750 dollars per tone at 7,700 to the dollar)."

The Minority said the current price paid to farmers is grossly unfair and threatened to erode the gains made by the past government in the cocoa industry, which saw cocoa production increasing from 158,000 tons in the early 80s to well over 4,000 tonnes at the time the National Democratic Congress (NDC) left office.

It said the admission by President John Agyekum Kufuor that about 50,000 tonnes of Ghana's cocoa was smuggled to neighbouring countries during the just ended cocoa season and the Minister of Finance, Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo's admission that national output of cocoa declined last season were sufficient indicators of the looming crisis in the industry. The Minority, therefore, said that the government should increase the prices of the commodity to restore the share of the farmer of the world market price to 70 per cent and thereby curb smuggling and save the industry from collapse