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COCOBOD urges businesses to invest in processing sector

The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has urged businesses to invest in the country’s cocoa processing sector to boost earnings in the cocoa value chain.

According to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of COCOBOD, Mr Joseph Boahen Aidoo, there were many investment opportunities in Ghana’s cocoa value chain that remained untapped.

The CEO, who was speaking at the maiden cocoa value chain investment meeting in Accra yesterday, expressed concern over the fact that Ghana earned less than six per cent of its entire cocoa value chain of about $110 billion.

Conference

The event, organised by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), in collaboration with COCOBOD and other partners, was on the theme: “Ghana’s brown gold: Sustaining investments and leveraging AfCFTA”.

Participants included stakeholders in the cocoa value chain, such as manufacturers, investors and consumers, who deliberated on investment opportunities in the country’s cocoa value chain.

Focus

Mr Aidoo said COCOBOD was now focusing on modernising cocoa farming to boost production to ensure that there was constant supply of cocoa beans to encourage mass processing.

“Let me assure everyone that so long as there is the cocoa productivity enhancement programme, there will be constant supply of cocoa. The beans are what will make the country’s cocoa industry sustainable, and we are doing exactly that,” he said.

Mr Aidoo said Ghana had the desired geographical conditions for cocoa production, thereby offering it competitive advantage over Asian and Far East countries such as China.

"We should not be worried about Hainan because our geographical conditions give us that competitive advantage. Cocoa cannot thrive in areas where temperatures fall below 18 degrees Celsius. In Ghana, our temperature is even above 21 degrees Celsius.

“But on that island (Hainan), temperatures can go as low as 14 degrees Celsius, and with that temperature in winter all the flowers will drop. We do not see that situation in Ghana and so we should not worry," the CEO added.

Harnessing full potential

The CEO of the GIPC, Mr Yofi Grant, said Ghana had not harnessed the full potential of the cocoa industry due to over-concentration on the production and export of cocoa beans, with little focus on value addition.

He said the establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offered investors and businesses an opportunity to broaden their horizon to include the cocoa sector.

“Despite the number of years of our leadership in the cocoa industry, we have not been able to build millionaires and billionaires out of it, regardless of the fact that cocoa has been the mainstay of our economy. That is because we only look at the production stage, where we plant the beans,” Mr Grant said.

For her part, the South African High Commissioner to Ghana, Ms Grace Jeanet Masond, said cocoa offered the continent “an absolute advantage” and pledged the readiness of her country to collaborate with Ghana to forge mutual a partnership to increase the gains in the sector.

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