[PART 1] GHANA COCOA BOARD ALLEGEDLY LIED ABOUT GHANAIAN COCOA FARMERS’ INCOME?

Is it time for the Ghanaian Cocoa Farmers to be paid in United States Dollars?

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On the 1st of October 2021, Ghana Cocoa Board announced through a press release that Ghana has maintained the 2020/21 producer price of cocoa as the producer price for the 2021/22 crop. Ghana’s producer price of cocoa beans per metric tonne for 2020/21 (i.e., Gh¢10,560) was a combination of the 2019/20 producer price of GH¢8,240 and the 2020/2021 Living income differential (LID) levy of GH¢2,320. Without stating the forecasted price at which they will be selling cocoa beans to their buyers, Cocobod stated that the Gh¢10,560 producer price per metric ton for the 2021/2022 crop year forms “87.15%” of the world market price. As questionable as I found it to be, I did some digging for data to do the calculations of the actual producer price as a percentage of the world market price to confirm if Cocobod’s percentage was right. In this article, I will be demonstrating the actual producer price as a percentage of the world market price so you can judge for yourself if Cocobod has been providing the public with false information about cocoa farmers’ income and the percentage of the world market price that gets into the pocket of cocoa farmers.