2021/22 New Cocoa Season Take Off Today 

The 2021/22 New Cocoa season for all cocoa farmers across Ghana begins today, Friday, October 8, 2021, and a 64-kilogram bag of dried cocoa is maintained at GH¢660.00.

This translates into GH¢10,560 per metric tonne for the 2021/2022 crop season, representing 87.1% of the Free on Board (FOB) value.

COCOBOD is hopeful it will exceed the 2020/2021 crop season record production of 1,040,000 due to new initiatives introduced to increase cocoa yield per hectare.

To help achieve its target for the new season, COCOBOD in September 2021 successfully secured a US$1.5billion Receivables Backed Pre-Export Trade Finance Facility to enable it to purchase the projected volumes of cocoa beans for the 2021/22 crop year.

At the close of the 2020/21 crop Season, cocoa beans purchased stood at one million and forty-five thousand five hundred metric tonnes (1,045,500mt), breaking the 10-year-old record set in the 2010/2011 crop year which was 1,024,526mt.

The Ghana Cocoa Board has introduced new electronic weighing machines scales to be used by Licensed Buying Companies for purchases of cocoa from 2021.

COCOBOD had already secured 40,000 pieces of the new weighing scale machines to be purchased by the Licensed Buying Companies.

The Chief Executive, Mr Joseph Boahen Aidoo, opined, based on research with the Ghana Standard Authority, the new electronic weighing scales cannot be tampered with to protect the farmers.

“He emphasized, this issue of weighing and cheating cocoa farmers has created a lot of problems, mistrust, and disagreement in the cocoa industry. So, we have these weighing scales that can rely on both solar and electricity so that it can work in remote places".

William Ofori Akwaboa, Eastern Regional Correspondent