Ghana cocoa purchases pick up

Cocoa purchases in Ghana have picked up after a slow start and the main crop in the worlds No 2 grower is on track to reach a 600,000 tonne target, the head of the Cocobod regulator said. "Until recently, there were uncertainties about the harvest, but now I can say that the purchases have recovered and we are on course to meet our target for the season," Cocobod Chief Executive Tony Fofie told Reuters in an interview late on Thursday.
Purchases for the first 25 weeks, up to the first week of March, reached 536,000 tonnes, Fofie said. That compared with a downwardly-revised 534,663 tonnes of beans purchased in the first 25 weeks of the previous season, Cocobod data showed.
However, as the 2008/09 season started three weeks earlier than usual, the periods are not directly comparable. Cocobod, a state entity which funds and monitors purchases by independent buyers and markets Ghanas cocoa crop under a semi-privatised system, has forecast purchases for the 2008/09 season at 650,000 tonnes, including 600,000 from the main crop.
Cocobod sets a universal farm gate price, which it raised by a third to 1,632 cedis per tonne last September, when it declared the previous season over early and opened the 2008/09 season three weeks earlier than usual in a bid to halt smuggling.
Neighbouring Ivory Coast, the worlds top producer, has a liberalised system where farm gate prices fluctuate in line with local and world market conditions, meaning some farmers and traders smuggle cocoa across the common border to increase profits.
"We were initially losing a significant volume of the beans through smuggling, but that is reducing now, partly as a result of the measures we have adopted," Fofie said, citing co-operation between Cocobod and Ghanas government to combat contraband.
Ghana has set an ambitious target of harvesting 1 million tonnes of cocoa by 2010/11 through increased use of fertiliser, improved farm husbandry and enhanced disease and pest control. Fofie said Cocobod, which borrows money from international banks to fund each years purchases, aimed to raise $1 billion for the coming 2009/2010 season, the same figure as for the current season, but that this could go up to $1.2 billion if the syndication was oversubscribed.