Producer price of Cocoa should be 600 Ghana cedis per bag instead- Minority 

The Minority NPP caucus in Parliament says the producer price of Cocoa should have been six hundred Ghana cedis per bag of 64 kilograms instead of the four hundred and 75 Ghana cedis that government came out with early this month.
 
It said a check on the extensive smuggling of chemical inputs and the elimination of inflated contracts for cocoa roads, would free much needed resources to pay better prices to farmers. 

This was contained in a statement signed by Dr Afriyie Akoto who is the Ranking Member on Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs committee. 

It said an increase of 50 Ghana cedis over the last crop season's price is not enough to cushion farmers. 

The statement said compared to the current rate of inflation around 17 percent, the cocoa farmer is worse off with the new price. 
It said comparing the increase of 11 point 76 percent in Ghana to the 10 percent increase awarded to cocoa farmers in Cote D’Ivoire is not correct. 

It says inflation in Cote D’Ivoire is less than five percent making the cocoa farmer there far better off. 
Again, the lending rate in Ghana is about 35 percent. 

Thus if a farmer took a loan to start up a venture in cocoa production or expand his farm, he would be in serious trouble after the 11.76 percent increase adding that lending rates in Cote D’Ivoire are below 5 percent.

The statement went on further to say that the Ghana Cedi has depreciated by more than 14 percent this year and if one factored this into the equation the Ghanaian cocoa farmer is rendered much poorer.

It noted that the Minority Caucus in Parliament in August, 2014 recommended that the new producer price for the crop year 2014/2015 should be fixed at four hundred and 79 Ghana cedis per bag due to the substantial decline in real producer prices and incomes of cocoa farmers over the period 2011/2012 – 2014/2015.

The NPP thus says the four hundred and 75 Ghana cedis just announced is two years too late.

GBC