| China Of All? |
| By Our Business Reporter | |
| Friday, 02 May 2008 | |
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Ghana’s efforts to promote cocoa trade with emerging industrial giants such as China and India are being undermined by trade tariffs applied to developing producers, says industry regulator COCOBOD. COCOBOD Chief Executive Isaac Osei said developing countries such as Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire faced higher tariffs on cocoa imports to China and India than less developed producers such as Benin, Guinea, Haiti, Togo or Uganda. "For us, it discourages investment in the cocoa sector here," he told a meeting of the Cocoa Producers’ Alliance (COPAL) late yesterday on the sidelines of the just ended U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting in Accra. Industry and South-South co-operation advocates are surprised, especially by China which has taken advantage of the environment of free trade to flood third world countries, especially Africa, with cheap imports which may not necessarily be of high quality. If any country has benefited from trade liberalization in Africa and the policy to remove trade barriers, it is China. Virtually every African country has opened its doors wide to cheap Chinese imports. Membership of COPAL, which accounts for 76 per cent of total world cocoa production, includes Brazil, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Gabon, Ghana, Malaysia, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Togo. Delegates from Indonesia and Tanzania, both cocoa producers but non-Copal members, also attended the meeting to discuss the world cocoa economy. Discussions centred on the fact that the cost of imports, including manufactured goods and oil, has outpaced commodity export prices despite the recent boom. Mr Osei said strengthening Ghana’s cocoa sector was key to attaining middle-income status by 2015. Ghana’s cocoa industry employs around 1 million people and is a major contributor to government revenue. It earned about $1.2 billion last year. Finance Minister Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu said there was an imbalance in the cocoa pricing system and urged Copal members to join forces to increase their share. "The current cocoa-chocolate value chain is characterised by an imbalance where the manufacturing and processing end is well positioned at the high value end, compared to the cocoa producers who receive a low share of the final price," he said. |
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