Ivory Coast is planning a new cocoa marketing system with an exchange in the main city of Abidjan and a series of specially designated warehouses dotted around growing regions, officials said.
The physical cocoa exchange, based on a soft commodities bourse in India, is being proposed by Ivory Coast's Regulatory and Control Fund (FRC) with backing from the Finance Ministry, local bank BNI and Swiss-based audit group ACE, they said.
Supporters of the new marketing scheme, due at the start of the 2004/05 season in October, say a physical cocoa exchange would give farmers more control over prices and guarantee the quality of cocoa for buyers in the world's top cocoa producer.
However the plans have already aroused the ire of the main farmers' unions, which see the new scheme as part of attempts by the FRC and its allies to wrest control of the West African country's lucrative cocoa sector away from farmers.
"None of the farmers has agreed to this exchange and no one has asked us what we think," said Bernard Kouassi Kouame, head of Coopaga co-operative in a town near the port of San Pedro.
Cocoa farmers staged protests against the FRC last month, saying the fund has been mismanaged and left them out of pocket. They threatened to disrupt main crop cocoa bean supply unless the fund was reformed. The former French colony produces an average 1.2 million tonnes of beans every year, or two-fifths of world output, and there are regular power struggles between different groups keen to wield control over the sector.
According to the plans seen by Reuters, the Audit Control Expertise Group (ACE) would be responsible for running warehouses in the main cocoa-producing regions where farmers, co-operatives and merchants would deliver their cocoa.
"Banks and stakeholders in cocoa want to secure their investments and that is understandable," said Andre Saumah, head of ACE's West African operations.
"We are looking for a way to do that by setting up this exchange for them," he told Reuters in Abidjan.
A designated warehouse would relay the quality, quantity and cocoa asking price to a trading platform in Abidjan, which would bring buyers and sellers together and handle payments.
Buyers would place bids through a computer based on their requirements in terms of quantity, grade and cost, and pay an agreed price by transfer through a clearing house a day later.
As part of preparations for the new marketing system, the FRC, BNI and another cocoa fund (FGCCC) have bought cocoa unit Dafci from French holding company Bollore, according to an official at the Ivorian subsidiary who declined to be named. Officials said the consortium behind the new system would use Dafci's infrastructure, its warehouses and trucks, to help get the new marketing system off the ground.