GIPC, COCOBOD to change narrative of cocoa industry - Yofi Grant

• The GIPC and COCOBOD are seeking to change the narrative of the cocoa industry

• Ghana currently does not have a large-scale cocoa farm of more than 100 hectares

• Cocoa production yields US$2 billion worth of foreign exchange into Ghana

An absence of 'cocoa billionaires' in Ghana depicts a lack of efficiently “monetized and domesticated” regime of the cash crop, Chief Executive of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), Yofi Grant has said.

Grant believes despite the strides made in the production of cocoa over the decades, Ghana cannot boast of a large-scale cocoa farm.

Addressing participants during GIPC’s Cocoa Value Investment meeting in Accra, Yofi Grant assured that his outfit along with the Ghana COCOBOD are resolute towards changing the narrative of the cocoa industry which has been somewhat underutilized.

“The crop generates approximately two billion dollars a year in foreign exchange and employs approximately 800,000 cocoa farmers. That’s directly within the whole value chain of the crop. It’s very significant to the economy, however, the sad thing is that we still have not seen that billionaire emerge from the cocoa industry,” Grant stressed.

He continued, “But I can tell you today that under the able leadership that we find in COCOBOD, there is some significant effort to ensure that we transform it into a very modern economy, as well as create significant value by adding value to the bean. Through this, we will just no more be a country that exports cocoa beans to Europe and to other parts of the world, but we will be a country that will export cocoa products,” he said.

Already, cocoa production yields US$2 billion worth of foreign exchange into Ghana but many producers lack the requisite knowledge about the value of the crop.