CASPRO goes bankrupt - owes Cocobod ?36 billion

The Free Press says Cashpro, the largest private cocoa buying company in Ghana is in serious crisis.

Apart from being unable to pay their workers' salaries for the past three months, the company owes several banks billions of cedis.

Cocobod is also demanding the immediate repayment of some ?36 billion which was given to the company as seed money for the purchase of cocoa in September last year.

Cashpro, which is owned by the Ahwoi brothers enjoyed a unique status in the NDC era. Because of the connections of the owners in the past government, they had unlimited access to cash and were therefore able to muscle their way into the cocoa purchasing business as a close competitor of the Produce Buying Company (PBC), the state-owned cocoa purchasing arm of Cocobod.

Sources close to the Cocobod revealed that the Ahwoi brothers were instrumental in the ill-fated divestiture of PBC so that they could acquire some of the assets of the company.

The company was also able to raise loans from various banks, notably the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) because of their political connections.

Using the same clout Cashpro was able to shorn Cocobod to give them a loan of ?36 billion as seed money for cocoa purchases whiles other private cocoa purchasing companies were denied such facilities.