COCOBOD, Ghana’s cocoa regulator, signed a $1.13bn syndicated loan on Monday with international banks to finance purchases for the upcoming season, which is due to open later this month, it said in a statement.
Ghana, the world’s second-largest cocoa producer behind Cote d’Ivoire, uses loans from international banks every year mainly to finance bean purchases. The two West African countries account for around 60 percent of global cocoa supply.
Cocobod said Monday’s loan, significantly less than the $1.5bn secured last year, was oversubscribed by $130 million.
Ghana’s parliament had approved a larger $1.3bn loan at the end of July.
The loan’s lead arrangers were Cooperative Rabobank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), DZ Bank, MUFG Bank, Natixis, Standard Chartered, the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) and the Ghana International Bank.
Cocoa production in Ghana is down sharply this year, seen at 689,000 tonnes on September 1 after a previous forecast of 800,000 tonnes. This has prompted the International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO) to upwardly revise its forecast for a global cocoa deficit.
Cocobod postponed announcing the new guaranteed cocoa price it will pay to farmers, which had been planned for Saturday. A spokesman told Reuters on Monday that the new price would be declared on Tuesday evening, following a stakeholder meeting.
The current price, 10,560 cedis ($1,030) per tonne, has not changed for two years.
Ghana was expected to release its adjusted price alongside Cote d’Ivoire, which on Friday raised its own adjusted price by more than 9 percent to CFA900 ($1.33) per kilogram.
The delay surprised three sector insiders, who told Reuters it could spell bad news for farmers who had hoped the new farmgate price would equal Cote d’Ivoire’s.
‘The problem with Ghana is that the currency is falling and is quite volatile at the moment,’ the director of one European cocoa company said, requesting anonymity.
‘Inflation reduces the price the field, so in the end, the price in Ghana will be … lower than in Cote d’Ivoire,” they added.
Ghana’s cedi currency has been one of Africa’s worst- performing currencies this year, losing around 30 percent of its value against the dollar in since January 1.