COCOBOD’s Self-financing Initiative To Roll Out On Tuesday

COCOBOD’s Chief Executive officer, Joseph Boahen Aidoo with some farmers

The board’s Chief Executive officer, Joseph Boahen Aidoo, stated that the organization is taking a blended approach when it comes to financing the cocoa crop season in 2024 and 2025.

In spite of COCOBOD’s earlier claims of self-financing, the Minister of Finance, Mohammed Amin Adam, made the announcement that the government would continue to seek external funding.

In a previous articulation, COCOBOD had demonstrated plans to move towards self-financing for the cocoa purchases, with assumptions for saving $150 million in interest payments.

Mr. Boahene Aidoo disclosed that COCOBOD will combine self-financing with existing external borrowing mechanisms when he was speaking on Friday, September 6 at a media engagement in Kumasi.

While self-financing remains parts a critical role of the arrangement, he recognized that borrowing could in any case happen.

He added that COCOBOD would now scale up the model after testing it during the crop season to buy and ship cocoa.

“We are blending what we’ve been doing for years. There isn’t anything wrong with introducing a new thing. But while there’s an existing module, you can only combine that module with a new one,” Boahene Aidoo said.

“We have already tried it during the last crop season, from June up to the end of August. That was the model we were using to buy cocoa and ship, and it has worked, but we want to scale it. So even as we may be going for a loan, because when you talk about syndication, it is like going to borrow, and what we are doing will not require borrowing. So if we are blending not borrowing with borrowing, I don’t think it should become an issue.”

“We want to implement the not borrowing, thus the self-financing. That is what we are starting the season with, and once it works, there will be no need for us to go for borrowing,” he said.

Additionally, COCOBOD has specified September 10 as the start date for purchasing cocoa for the main crop season in 2024 and 2025. The initial date for the announcement was September 1.

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Sources say the controller is expected to build the state-guaranteed value paid to its cocoa farmerd by almost 45% for the season.

The farmers want a price that is appealing because of the negative effects of illegal mining in the cocoa industry and the rising cost of farming.

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