Smuggling of cocoa beans from Ivory Coast is expected to ease in the current 2005/06 season due to stricter quality controls in neighbouring Ghana and swings in world prices, industry operators said on Wednesday.
Smuggling from the world's top cocoa producer has gone on for years, especially as growers and traders from Ivory Coast take advantage of higher prices often paid in number 2 producer Ghana thanks to that country's generally higher quality beans.
Smuggling from Ivory Coast to Ghana as well as Liberia, Guinea and Burkina Faso has jumped since the start of a civil war in 2002, and increasingly well organised and sophisticated networks smuggled some 200,000 tonnes of cocoa in 2003/04. But industry operators told Reuters they expected smuggling to slow to around 90,000 tonnes this season from around 110,000 tonnes in the 2004/05 year.