Johannesburg - Cameroon’s
plans to more than double the nation’s production of cocoa beans by 2020 will
not be achieved as falling prices are dissuading farmers from planting new
crops, according to the state’s support company for growers.
Producers in the world’s
fifth-biggest cocoa producer have seen farmgate prices slump by more than a
third in the past year as London future contracts declined on forecasts of an
oversupply. Cameroon, which produced 269 495 metric tons in the year through
July, is in the third year of a strategy to increase annual output to more than
600 000 tons by 2020.
“The falling prices are
seriously discouraging farmers,” Jerome Mvondo, director-general of the
Cameroon Cocoa Development Corporation, said Monday in an interview in the
capital, Yaounde. “That plan is unrealistic and unattainable.”
While the strategy to
increase output envisaged new plantings of about 100 000 hectares (247 105
acres) every year, Cameroon only achieved growth of 2 500 to 3 500 hectares
since 2014, Mvondo said. The government has also cut subsidies for inputs such
as fertilizers and pesticides by 30 billion CFA francs ($49.8 million) this
season, he said.
Cocoa strategy
Earlier on Monday, the
government said it had asked an emergency committee to compile a strategy on
how to deal with the impact of low prices. The committee should consider how
the country can process more cocoa locally to cope with volatile prices, Trade
Minister Luc Magloire Mbarga Antangana said in a statement handed to reporters.
Read also: Cocoa growers to work together
“Our message to farmers is
not to hastily rush out of the sector out of panic, because there is going to
be a way out,” Mbarga said in the statement.
Cameroon processes about
25 percent of its cocoa locally, according to the regulator, the National Cocoa
and Coffee Board. The sector accounts for 3 percent of the country’s gross
domestic product.
Cocoa for July delivery
rose 4.8 percent to close at $1 955 a ton on ICE Futures US in New York on
Monday, after stockpiles monitored by ICE showed their first weekly drop in 14
weeks. The increase was the biggest by a most-active contract since March 20
and pares the decline in the past 12 months to 36 percent.