Editor of the Insight Newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr., has expressed utter shock at the country’s inability to depend on its finance for cocoa purchase.

During his submission on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana on Wednesday, March 27. Kwesi Pratt bemoaned the stagnant pace at which the cocoa industry travels, especially when Ghana is one of the biggest growers.

“There is something that I cannot understand, if you look at Ghana’s history of cocoa production, we started producing cocoa way back from the days of Tetteh Quarshie, and it is strange, absolutely strange that up until today, we need foreign financing to be able to buy Cocoa, it simply doesn’t make sense,” he said.

According to Bloomberg, the country is set to lose access to a key funding facility as a crisis in its cocoa crop has left it without enough beans to secure the fund. The Ghana Cocoa Board, the industry regulator, known as COCOBOD relies on foreign financing to pay cocoa farmers for their beans.

Kwesi Pratt explained that it will be in the interest of the country to welcome school of thoughts that say major attention should be given to food production in the country.

“At some point we were told Cocoa is the mainstay of the Ghanaian economy, I don’t think it is now, but even if it plays a secondary role or tertiary role, it is something that we should have gathered seriously, we haven’t, but there’s another school of thought which says we should actually be moving away from Cocoa production to food production because many of our people don’t actually consume cocoa”

Kwesi Pratt further called for a policy review on the general cocoa sector and to come up with new policies which ensure that the country get the maximum benefit out of cocoa production.

By: Vanessa Edotom Boateng | Metrotvonline.com | Ghana