Indonesia's cocoa output is likely to fall 5 percent to 456,000 tonnes in 2009 as the country struggles to contain a deadly fungal disease, the chairman of the Indonesian Cocoa Association said on Tuesday. The estimated fall in output would come on top of the forecast drop of 7.7 percent in 2008 blamed on the spread of Vascular-streak Dieback (VSD) in the main growing island of Sulawesi, said Halim Razak.
"It's going to fall slightly by around 5 percent because no significant actions have been taken," he told Reuters in an interview in Makassar, the provincial capital of South Sulawesi and Indonesia's key cocoa export port.