Tony Fofie is the Chief Executive of Ghana Cocobod
Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Accra, Friday September 14, 2012
The
Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) could not meet its targeted production levels for
cocoa beans for the 2012/2013.
Last
year, Ghana produced a record one million tonnes of cocoa beans but it
announced yesterday that unfavourable weather could not help them to achieve
the target.
“Our
target is to buy about 800,000 tonnes in the coming season, both main and light
(crops),” Reuters quoted Noah Kwasi Amenyah, Public Affairs Manager of Cocobod
as saying.
According
to analysts, production reduced by more than five percent.
The world’s second-largest cocoa grower, Ghana aimed to
produce at least 1 million metric tonnes of beans for the crop season as it did
in the 2011/2012 season.
This comes after COCOBOD signed a 1.5 billion dollar (lower
than $2 billion for last year) pre-export finance agreement with 31 local and
international banks for cocoa purchases in the 2012/2013 season.
Tony Fofie, Chief Executive of Ghana COCOBOD explained that they based projections on weather conditions.
Tony Fofie, Chief Executive of Ghana COCOBOD explained that they based projections on weather conditions.
“Normally you look at your forecast before you ask for the
money so you can know what you’re going to use the money. So after looking at
our forecast we settled on the amount,” he told Joy FM.
“This year hasn’t been very good as opposed to last year when
we hit the 1 million metric tonnes target. And you know cocoa production is
very dependent on the weather and this has not been too favourable this year,”
he added.
At the launch of the 7th Alliance of Cocoa Producing
Countries (COPAL) day celebration in late August, Mr. Fofie told CITY & BUSINESS GUIDE that “by
all means there would be a shortfall. The weather has not been very kind to us
around the west coast and we expect a slight shortfall in our production.”
He said
apart from poor weather conditions a ‘plummeted’ global price for cocoa was
also going to affect production.
“The global price is definitely going to affect our
revenue this period because apart from the fact that there is reduced
production, the global prices have also plummeted to such an extent that it is
negatively going to affect our production,” he said.
Mr. Fofie further said, “Normally there is what we
call fatigue. If the trees bear so much over the year, fatigue sets in and they
don’t actually bear the way we want it.
“The issue is not just having good weather, the
distribution of rainfall pattern is very important. If you need rainfall at a
particular point in time for the development of the tree and you do not have
water, it means you are creating a stifling effect on the trees itself. There
is stress at a certain point,” he explained.
He stressed the need to add more trees to the
existing population to boost production, stressing that COCOBOD was working
towards to attain that feat.
“We have a lot of interventions in place including
the right use of chemicals to stem diseases and application of fertilizers to
boost production,” he added.
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