The Ghana Cocoa Board will on Thursday [May 30, 2019] cease its purchases of cocoa beans for the 2018/19 main crop season.

The decision was contained in a statement by the sector regulator to Citi Business News.

COCOBOD said that it will however allow Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs) to obtain returns from up country centres by extending the date by one more week to Thursday [June 6, 2019].

For this crop season, COCOBOD intends to purchase nine hundred thousand metric tonnes of cocoa beans.

This has been backed by the Board’s annual syndicated loan of 1.3 billion dollars secured from twenty-one banks at an interest rate of 2.5 percent.

This is the second consecutive time that the Ghana COCOBOD has secured 1.3 billion dollars for its purchases since the 1.8 billion dollars secured in the 2016/2017 crop year.

The fluctuating world market prices of cocoa impacted the drop in amount secured for the just ended cocoa season.

But Mr. Aidoo in an earlier interview with Citi Business News said his outfit will not be tempted to increase amount secured despite improvement in crop yield.

“When you syndicate, you collateralize cocoa for whatever amount you take. So when the price of cocoa is going down, you will be giving up more cocoa. Because world market price is continuing to fall, we need to tread cautiously…that is why we always go in for a manageable amount based on research by the Monitoring and Research Department of COCOBOD,” the CEO said.

Source: citinewsroom.com