The management of Ghana Cocoa Board and its subsidiary, Cocoa Marketing Company (CMC) Limited, wish to clarify that it has not failed to secure a buyer for its 2020/21 cocoa beans as has been widely publicised in the international media and replicated in the national media.

Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, last week, lifted the suspension of the sale of 2020/21 cocoa beans after officially announcing the new trading mechanism for the sale of cocoa

In line with trading practice, the CMC, on 19th June 2019, decided to do a market sounding after the introduction of a Living Income Differential (LID) and weigh the market reaction and its dynamics.

We will like to correct the misrepresentation of the LID to mean a surcharge. The LID is part of the price component of the trading mechanism and not a surcharge as was reported by Bloomberg.

The management of Ghana Cocoa Board and its subsidiary Cocoa Marketing Company (CMC) Limited have observed with worry the inaccurate interpretation and publication by Bloomberg and other media houses on the sale of Ghana’s beans.

We, therefore, entreat all to disregard the news about Ghana’s beans not finding a buyer, which seems to fall in line with a certain negative narrative of a challenge in the implementation of a well-understood trading mechanism.

We wish to assure Ghanaian farmers and all stakeholders that the new mechanism has been understood to be the official trading system, and we shall sell at a price for the benefit of our farmers and the sustainability of the cocoa industry.