Government is struggling to recoup $1.7 billion it injected into the cocoa sector after the “blatant dissipation” of farmers’ resources, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, Minority spokesperson on agriculture has said.
He told Joy News, farmers have no incentive to increase production, mentioning that Government owes cocoa farmers their three-year bonus to the tune of over 100 million cedis. Also instead of at least tripling producer price last year, the government only doubled it after many years of non-increment.
This, according to Dr. Owusu Akoto, has influenced the smuggling of Ghana’s cocoa to the neighbouring countries, stressing, “The producer price is so wide, making it attractive for people to smuggle our cocoa to Togo.”
He is worried Government’s attitude towards the sector poses a risk to its ability to pay back the cocoa syndicated loan it secured last year.
Under the terms, Ghana is expected to produce at least 810,000 metric tons of cocoa to pay off the loan, but as of February this year only 510,000 metric tons has been purchased by the Ghana Cocoa Board.
The loan among others is to ensure availability of fertilizers and other farming inputs to the farmers and also construct roads in cocoa growing areas to ensure easy transportation of the product.
However, Dr. Afriyie Akoto insists corruption in the fertilizer distribution to farmers is also responsible for the low yield recorded this season.
He said even though Ghana is cultivating on 1.7 million hector land, same as neighbouring Ivory Coast, the latter has been producing 1.6 million metric tonnes while the country hovers around 700,000 tonnes.
It is for this and other reasons that the Kufuor-led administration initiated special programmes like the mass cocoa spraying to increase produce in the sector, but all these programmes were “bastardized” by the NDC government when it took over power.
The Kufuor administration doubled Ghana’s cocoa production from 300,000 tonnes to 600,000 tonnes within three years, Dr. Afriyie Akoto explained, “using mass spraying and high-tech in the fertilization of cocoa trees and the administration projected one million metric tons in the next four years.
“Just that, that programme has been bastardized, reduced substantially, instead of spraying six times in a year it has been cut down to two sprays and even that not all farmers benefitted so the diseases are rising, affecting our output in cocoa production”.
