Cocoa Processing Company needs capitalisation — Shareholders
Shareholders of the Cocoa Processing Company Limited (CPC) have called on the majority shareholders to recapitalise the company to enable it to discharge its duties more effectively.
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The President of the CPC Shareholders Association, Mr Sas George, who made the call, said the majority shareholders, Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), Ministry of Finance and Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), must come together to inject additional capital into the company to solve its problems.
Speaking at the 2013 annual general meeting of the company, he said: “We are in this country and foreign investors will come and buy our own cocoa beans and use our machines to process it, yet our company cannot do the same. This is unacceptable and I’m challenging our majority shareholders to act now.”
According to him, the only thing saving the company presently is the redevaluation process that the company had embarked on.
“If it had not been for the redevaluation, shareholders’ funds would have been in negative as well,” he said, and asked the majority shareholders to either provide the company with additional capital or undertake capital reconstruction to save the company.
No dividend
The company was unable to recommend the payment of dividend as a result of financial constraints.
The shareholders complained that no dividend had been declared for the past 10 years, and described the situation as worrying; especially when the numbers were not showing any recovery.
They, therefore, urged the directors to resort to other interventions to save the situation, to enable the shareholders to enjoy from their investment.
The Board Chairman, Mr Jacob S. Arthur, said the company faced a number of operational challenges in the year under review and as a result it could not achieve its production target.
He said the cocoa factories processed a total of 20,979.406 metric tonnes (69.93 per cent) as against the set target of 30,000 metric tonnes for the year 2012/2013, while confectionery production for the period was 1,296.312 metric tonnes as against the target of 1,830.00 metric (70.83 per cent).
On the future of the company, Mr Arthur said most of the structural challenges facing it had been resolved and the dedicated power line was in place, adding that the borehole project had been completed and the International Standard Organisation Certification had also been secured.
Debt
He announced that COCOBOD was assisting the company to free itself of its huge indebtedness to financial institutions to pave the way for increased supply of light crop beans for the company to achieve a 70-per cent production rate. GNA