ON COCOA
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1. The unprecedented two-year cocoa price windfall of 2023–2025 driven by a poor crop, and which resulted in a record 40-year rally whereby international markets exceeded $10,000 per tonne, has ended --- see chart below. The cocoa market is highly likely to experience significant correction and reversion to lower, albeit still elevated levels of about $3,500-$4000 per tonne for rest of the year 2026.
2. Credible burden-sharing across the cocoa system starts from the top. That is why 90% of the today’s gross FOB price announcement is being passed to farmers compared to 70% hitherto [see the August and October 2025 GoG announcements].
3. Beyond this, rigorous COST RATIONALISATION at COCOBOD is key. The company must reduce its cost structure which includes: (a) review all compensation packages, allowances, and discretionary benefits including to senior management; (b) scrap quasi-fiscal spending like cocoa roads and cut back on non-essential spending, including travel; (c) channel additional savings into frontline farmer support and extension programmes that directly increase farm productivity and livelihoods. Some of these are being implemented as part of IMF programme structrural benchmarks.
3. The lesson that OIL & GAS, COCOA and GOLD - Ghana’s three exports by value - continue to constantly demonstrate is very simple: we cannot build a robust economy from exporting primary commodities as we’ve done the past 60+ years. The real structural and productivity transformation of building and retaining more in-country value especially within agriculture/agri-services and manufacturing is imperative.