Ivory Coast aims for better cocoa, less smuggling

The head of Ivory Coast's cocoa marketing, Lucien Tape Doh, wants to ensure the country remains the world's top grower by improving bean quality and clamping down on smuggling to its neighbours.
"We will do all it takes to stop our farmers from selling their cocoa in Ghana and that way we will know how much Ivory Coast really produces," he said at his cocoa farm of just over 25 hectares in the western town of Issia.
"Today we face strong competition from Indonesia and Brazil. Ghana has made estimates of 700,000 tonnes because people here are sending their cocoa across the border to them," the head of the Coffee and Cocoa Bourse (BCC) said, referring to the season now ending.
"They (Ghanaians) take our tonnage and declare it as their own to make us uneasy," he added in a recent interview.
Analysts and pod counters had previously put the amount of Ivorian cocoa smuggled into Ghana in 2003/04 to profit from better prices at 70,000 to 100,000 tonnes.
Ghana, the world's second biggest grower after Ivory Coast with average output of 490,000 tonnes, has had a record season this year with more than 700,000 tonnes harvested.
Ghana denies achieving this through cocoa smuggled from Ivory Coast, which the director of the Cocobod, Ghana's cocoa marketing body, estimates at just 5,000 tonnes.
However, Tape Doh said the Ivorian army should be deployed along the border between the two countries to deter smugglers.
He said surveillance committees should be set up by local authorities, assisted by local cooperatives and farmers, which he said should demonstrate their patriotism by refusing to sell their cocoa to Ghana.
"In Abengourou and Aboisso we are going to increase the powers of the military but I think that we farmers should be at the border like soldiers to keep watch," he said.
On the problem of Ivory Coast's cocoa bean quality, Tape Doh said he wanted to see more done to raise awareness among farmers so they understood the advantages of selling high quality cocoa and were encouraged to produce better beans.
"It is the battle facing all Ivorian growers today," he said. "And the first battle facing the BCC.
"We need high quality products to earn more from world markets because we have competitors. We need to apply ourselves to improving quality, we need to raise awareness among growers and go to their farms to explain to them what needs to be done."