Cocoa Price Cuts: Minority demands immediate restoration of original prices
The Minority Caucus in Parliament has called for an immediate reversal of the recent 29% reduction in the producer price of cocoa, urging the government to restore prices to their original level before the February 12 reductions.
According to the caucus, the “controversial reduction” threatens to worsen the financial crisis facing about 800,000 cocoa farming households across the country.
Speaking on the floor of Parliament on Tuesday, February 17, Minority Leader Afenyo-Markin called for the immediate restoration of the producer price to GH¢3,625 per 64-kilogram bag, up from the newly reduced rate of GH¢2,587.
“We the minority hereby call on the government as a matter of urgency to restore the producer price of cocoa in Ghana to its original value of GH¢3,625 Ghana cedis per 64-kilogram bag with immediate effect,” Afenyo-Markin declared. “We also demand that government and COCOBOD pay any damages that farmers and the LBCs might have suffered already by the recent announcement.”
The Minority Leader also pointed to the management approach of neighboring Côte d’Ivoire, which he claimed, has maintained its cocoa producer price despite facing the same global market conditions.
“Côte d’Ivoire, our sister country, almost same population, same industry dynamics, they don’t even have premium cocoa, Ghana has premium cocoa, in spite of the so-called external factors, in spite of the so-called external shocks and external reduction in international price, Côte d’Ivoire today is maintaining their price and paying more to their farmers than Ghanaians are paying,” he asserted.
Meanwhile, government has defended the price reduction as both legal and necessary in order to rescue the cocoa sector from the current debt crisis.
“There’s nothing illegal about what has happened – that cocoa prices can be reviewed upwards and can also be reviewed downwards. When you review it downwards it’s not an illegality. Same way when you review it upwards it’s also not an illegality. So, the charge that reviewing it is illegal is unfounded both in law and also in practice,” Minister for Government Communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu said during a recent interview.
On February 12, during the announcement of the new price adjustments, Finance Minister Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson revealed that COCOBOD is saddled with a GH¢29 billion debt spanning the past 8 years.
He noted that COCOBOD had projected an output of 800,000 tonnes and committed 786,672 tonnes in forward contracts for the 2023/2024 crop season, but posted a 45% deviation that resulted in the rollover of 333,767 tonnes at an average price of $2,661 per tonne.
“This resulted in a loss of over 1 billion US dollars which would have gone to the cocoa farmer or other stakeholders,” Ato Forson stated. “In 2024, COCOBOD could not pay the final tranche of the syndicated loan which was due in July 2024 and received a 70 million US dollar break finance from the Ministry of Finance to avert a default.”
The Minister cited a sharp drop in global cocoa prices from $7,200 per metric tonne in August 2025 to about $4,100 per tonne by February 2026 as the key reason for the reduction, explaining that the 2025/2026 crop season began with a producer price of GH¢51,660 per tonne (GH¢3,625 per bag), calculated at 70% of the gross Free on Board (FOB) price of $7,200 per tonne, but as global prices dropped, Ghana’s fixed farmgate price left its cocoa uncompetitive on international markets.
“The current situation is largely driven by the unwillingness of buyers to purchase Ghana’s cocoa because it has become uncompetitive and very expensive,” he explained. “Cocoa from other producing countries is now selling at a price significantly lower than that of Ghana’s producer price.”
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