Ghana’s cocoa sector may face major foreign exchange setbacks unless swift investments are made to boost large-scale production.
That’s the caution from the Netherlands Ambassador to Ghana, Jeroen Verheul, who has called for an urgent reset of the country’s cocoa industry.
He warns that Ghana risks losing its global competitiveness to emerging producers like Ecuador and Brazil if long-standing structural issues in the sector are not urgently addressed.
The Dutch envoy was speaking to Channel One Business on the sidelines of a high-level public-private dialogue in Accra on Ghana’s readiness for the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.
The Ambassador stressed that compliance with EU sustainability directives and increased productivity through large-scale farming will be key to maintaining Ghana’s market share and safeguarding crucial forex earnings.
For him, any decline in Ghana’s global competitiveness could trigger broader macroeconomic consequences.
“If production is going down as it is going down right now, then that means there is less export of cocoa and less foreign exchange earned by farmers and less foreign exchange earned by the economy.
“So it’s a threat to the economy if production if going down so there is an imperative for the Ghana economy to maintain the cocoa sector, to invest in it, to make it more productive to make it more competitive,” Jeroen Verheul said.
As an intervention, the International Trade Centre (ITC) is also taking proactive steps to help Ghana align its cocoa production with international standards to avoid future market rejections.
Larry Attipoe National Coordinator for the Centre’s value chain initiatives in Ghana said this is expected to strengthen Ghana’s cocoa value chain and ensure long-term export viability.
“We bring information. What does it take you to produce to meet international demands [and] meet all the specifications,” he mentioned.
