Ghana loses one billion dollars as global cocoa price falls to $1,880 per tonne

Ghana, the world’s second largest cocoa producers, lost about one billion dollars in earnings in the 2016/2017 cocoa season as the average price of the commodity fell from a high of $3,000 to $1,880 per tonne an analysis of the market for cocoa seen by Businessamlive.com has shown.

Market analysts attributed the unfavourable outcome in the reported period to abundant supply of the commodity and weakening of demand resulting from health concerns among consumers of its products.

But it is not clear how this drop affected Nigeria, which is still struggling to revive its cocoa production after years of neglect of agriculture that has seen her contribution to global production and exports lowered.

Cocoa, behind crude oil and gold, is Ghana’s third biggest revenue earner with its earnings from cocoa beans, paste and butter put at $3.355bn at the end of 2015.

Analysts had predicted a further drop in the nation’s cocoa revenue in March after it recorded a 10% drop in cocoa exports between February 2016 and February 2017.

Figures from the Bank of Ghana had shown that cocoa revenue dropped from $688.5 million in February 2016 to $619 million in February this year. This followed a 34% decline in the price of a tonne of cocoa, as the commodity fell from $3,046.6 to $2003.8 per tonne on the international market.

Ghana, along with its West African neighbour and the world’s largest cocoa producers, Cote d’Ivoire, had earlier this month, signed the Accra Agreement to tackle the numerous challenges affecting the cocoaeconomy of both nations.

Top on the agenda at the two-day technical cooperation was the foreign pricing of cocoa by Western and Asian nations. Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, contribute over 60 % of the world’s cocoa production.

Indonesia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Dominican Republic make up the rest of the top 10 global producers of cocoa.