Ghana recorded more than 1.4 million metric tonnes of cocoa beans production in the 2020/21 crop season.
This is about a 45% increase over 2019/2020 production and beats the earlier record of about one million metric tonnes achieved in the 2009/2010 crop season.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Cocoa Board, Joseph Boahen Aidoo, this shows policies and programmes implemented by the government are proving worthwhile.
COCOBOD had implemented cocoa cultivation under the irrigation system, hand pollination, and rehabilitation of age and diseased-infected farms.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Ghana may surpass the anticipated 1.1 million tonnes of cocoa production for the 2020/2021 crop season which closes next month.
The bumper harvest according to industry watchers was far achieved even before the main crop season ended in June.
In actual fact, there were too many cocoa beans produced this year as some of the Licensed Buying Cocoa Companies particularly the smaller players exhausted their seed fund, provided by COCOBOD for purchases of cocoa beans.
The impressive outing had been attributed to favourbale and good policies by the present COCOBOD administration. Some of the policies include “The Living Income Differential” which has raised the income of cocoa farmers.
This performance coupled with favourable world market prices will boost exports and the country’s reserves and impact on the cedi.
The nation had earlier forecast 900,000 tonnes of cocoa beans production for this crop season.
Together with Ivory Coast, the two nations control about 70% of the world’s cocoa market.
By: Isaac Clottey
