The Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto has predicted a further drop in revenue from cocoa for this year.
This also comes after the ten percent drop in revenue from cocoa exports between February 2016 and February 2017.
According to the Minister, the declining global price of cocoa will largely affect the cocoa subsector which is among the top export earners for the country.
“Well it is going to happen and even more; of course because since then cocoa prices on international markets have dropped by nearly one third from over 3,000 dollars per tonne its now just around 2,000 dollars per tonne,” Dr. Afriyie Akoto said.
“All producing companies are very worried about such a sharp decline in nine months and therefore our revenue from cocoa is going to decline proportionally unless of course we increase production in order to make up partly for the loss,” he added.
Latest figures by the Bank of Ghana have shown that revenue from cocoa dropped from 688.5 million dollars in February 2016 to 619 million dollars in February 2017.
This followed the thirty-four percent drop in the price of a tonne of cocoa for the period.
The prices declined from 3046.6 dollars to 2003.8 dollars per tonne.
But Dr. Afriyie Akoto tells Citi Business News plans to increase cocoa output should shield Ghana from the devastating impact.
“This is why I am saying that we have taken all these measures to increase cocoa production, collaborate with our cocoa producing members’ of the international cocoa organization so that we can harmonize our supplies on the market to at least try and control the impact.”
Meanwhile the Ministry is highly confident it will meet its ambitious one million metric tonnes target by the end of the four years of the NPP administration.
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By: Pius Amihere Eduku/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana