Ghana COCOBOD is confident production levels of cocoa for this cocoa season will not fall below last seasons.
The comments follows reports that Ghana could record a decline in its yields because most of the trees are over-aged.
Ghana exceeded its cocoa target yield of 850,000 metric tonnes to produce 896,000 metric tonnes last season.
Speaking to Citi Business, Deputy Chief Executive Office of COCOBOD, Dr Francis Oppong conceded it had been the trend for yields to fall after high yields but he is confident it will not fall below last season’s figure.
“We cannot go below the 896,000 metric tonnes. We expect to go beyond that”, he said.
According to him, “we also know that this particular year, we are going to have a late crop going into January, February and March provided the rains favour us. It is quite common with most tree crops that years when you have a lot of production, the following year there is a slide.”
“But that does not mean we will not achieve what we have set out. So we are praying that we have the rains”, he added.
Dr Francis Oppong was speaking to Citi Business News at the press soiree and launch of Nestle Ghana’s corporate social responsibility programme, the Nestle Cocoa Plan.
The head of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs Manager of Nestle, Aaron Fenu explaining the Nestle Cocoa Plan to Citi Business News said it is to “ensure that we make social contributions of our company and to make sure that farmers that we source from run profitable farms.”
According to him “we provide educational materials and facilities to these communities that we source from. In terms of benefits, we are concentrating on women and children.”
Aaron Fenu added that Nestle sees education to be key. “We have what we call the village resource centre which is a container-like ICT centre to make sure that as we train the children, we also have farmer-friendly programmes to train the farmers as well.”
By: Anim Kwaku Boadu/citifmonline.com/Ghana