Tuesday, 19th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

Ivory Coast increases cocoa farmer price by 10 per cent

By Joe Bavier
30 September 2016   |   3:19 am
Ivory Coast increased the minimum price farmers must get for a kg of cocoa beans for the 2016-17 crop by 10 percent to 1,100 CFA ($1.88), a government spokesman said on Wednesday, the first day of the new season.
Cocoa

Cocoa

Ivory Coast increased the minimum price farmers must get for a kg of cocoa beans for the 2016-17 crop by 10 percent to 1,100 CFA ($1.88), a government spokesman said on Wednesday, the first day of the new season.

The world’s top cocoa producer recorded port arrivals of 1,565,000 tonnes of beans in 2015-16, down 12 percent from the previous season’s record crop, spokesman Bruno Kone said after a cabinet meeting in the commercial capital Abidjan.Ivory Coast exported 1,548,000 tonnes of cocoa in 2015-16, down from 1,628,000 tonnes the previous season.

The Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC), Ivory Coast’s marketing board, had proposed farmer prices ranging from 1,000 CFA to 1,100 CFA but advised the government to leave it unchanged at 1,000 to protect against an expected drop in global prices, CCC and finance ministry sources said.

“Contrary to previous years when (the CCC) asked us to pick the highest price, this time they are asking us to keep the price unchanged due to market conditions,” said a senior finance ministry source who asked not to be named.

He said the CCC was expecting world cocoa prices, which have fallen steadily since late last month, to continue their slide through December. Rather than fix a higher farmer price, the CCC favoured doubling its reserve fund to 150 billion CFA francs.

The government has steadily raised the farmer price since the 2012-13 season when it abandoned a system of spot buying and began selling its cocoa forward as part of sweeping reforms of the sector.

In this article

0 Comments