Ghana farmgate cocoa price unchanged as season opens

Ghana has left its farmgate purchase price for cocoa for the new 2013-14 season unchanged at 3,392 cedis ($1,560) per tonne, Deputy Finance Minister Ato Forson said on Friday.

Cocoa pod 

   Forson said the farmgate price for farmers in the world's second biggest grower, which represents 79.17 percent of the net FOB price, was still competitive compared with prices in neighbouring Ivory Coast, the world's top producer.
   "Even though Ivory Coast has increased their price, Ghana's price is still higher ... than the price in Ivory Coast," Forson told a news conference in Accra.
   Ivory Coast raised the minimum price payable to cocoa farmers for the October-to-March main crop by 25 CFA francs to 750 CFA francs ($1.55) per kilogramme on Oct. 2.
   Purchases for the new Ghana 2013/14 cocoa season will begin on Friday.
   The producer price is the level at which the regulator Cocobod agrees to buy cocoa from farmers and it is set by a committee of industry stakeholders including the government, cocoa farmers and Cocobod.
   For the 2012/13 crop year, which closed on September 12, Ghana increased the producer price to 3,392 cedis per tonne from 3,280 cedis the previous season.
   Forson said given the continued fall in global cocoa prices, government was sacrificing about 62 percent of its share of export tax of FOB to make it possible to maintain the price.
   "This shows government's commitment to the non-oil sector especially agriculture and for that mater cocoa which has been the backbone of this country's economy for over a century."
   Cocobod is hoping to buy 830,000 tonnes of cocoa during the season, almost at the same level of the 835,410 tonnes it purchased in the 2012/13 season.