Ivory Coast's cocoa farmers should be paid more for their beans to stem the flow of cocoa being smuggled out of the world's top grower into neighbouring countries, President Laurent Gbagbo said late on Friday. "The only remedy is to set a farmgate price which is higher than that in other countries," he told farmers from the east of the country at a meeting in the economic capital Abidjan.
Up to 150,000 tonnes of Ivorian cocoa are estimated to have been smuggled into neighbouring Ghana during the 2003/04 season because prices were higher in the world's second biggest grower.
"We will have to work together to see how we can set a price that attracts coffee and cocoa from other countries here, rather than attracting our cocoa to them," Gbagbo said.
The minimum indicative farmgate price of 390 CFA francs per kg ($0.76), a guideline price revised every three months, is due to be reviewed next week but farmers say the price is meaningless as middlemen usually offer much less.
Cocoa prices on world markets rallied recently, spurred by renewed conflict in the west of the divided country, but the prices actually paid to farmers are largely driven by the amount of supply available and the quality of beans.
Ivory Coast has been divided into a government-run south and rebel-held north since a civil war grew out of a failed coup against Gbagbo in September 2002.
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