Ghana sets up committee to fight cocoa smuggling as country loses about $340m

Ghana’s major cash crop is cocoa, but the country seems to be losing badly needed foreign exchange from cocoa export as smugglers have become unrelenting in sneaking the product out of the country.

In a telephone interview with ghanabusinessnews.com, Dr. Yaw Adu Ampomah, Deputy CEO of the COCOBOD, the national regulator of the cocoa industry estimated that between 80,000 metric tons to 100,000 metric tons of cocoa is smuggled out of the country every year and that, he said, based on the current price of cocoa amounts to a loss of between $300 million to $340 million to Ghana.

To deal with the problem of smuggling, he told ghanabusinessnews.com that a committee involving major stakeholders has been formed and it is “working on the ground to kill it.”

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi