Cote d’Ivoire ‘s Coffee and Cocoa Council will buy 100,000 metric tons of surplus cocoa, Kobenan Kouassi Adjoumani, the agriculture minister in the world’s top cocoa grower, told Reuters on Tuesday.
President Alassane Ouattara in October announced that the country was raising the fixed farm gate price per kg for the 2025/26 main crop to a record 2,800 CFA francs.
As a result, cocoa that would have ordinarily been diverted to neighbouring Liberia and Ghana has stayed in the country, and some production from those countries has been transported to Ivory Coast, fuelling the surplus, Adjoumani said on the sidelines of a press conference.
“We have approximately 123,000 tons of cocoa in stock with the producers, but I think we will need to purchase around 100,000 tons in the coming days,” he said.
The government also intends to ramp up border security measures to stop the influx of cocoa from Ghana, Liberia and Guinea, he said.
Declining cocoa prices have also slowed purchases by exporters, he said.
The resulting surplus has caused congestion at ports including San Pedro in recent days, with trucks bearing cocoa beans unable to unload them.
“Our objective is to protect producers’ income and the country’s social stability, and the government is mobilised to resolve this issue,” Adjoumani said, adding that the new purchasing mechanism would only cover the main crop season.
The CCC sold 85% of its production before the main crop harvest began, Adjoumani said.
