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A member of the Agric Committee of Parliament and a representative of the people of  Kwadaso in the Ashanti region, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto has disclosed that the shut-down of the two cocoa factories out of the 3 by the Cocoa Processing Company due to operational challenges can never be true.

He told Peace FM News that the company about 6 years ago borrowed an amount of $60m from some banks to help them increase their production level to about 65,000 metric tonnes per annum which has been achieved but the onus lies with the payment of the loan facility.

They again borrowed an additional $1.8 billion outside Ghana of which they serve 620,000 metric tonnes of cocoa produced yearly as collateral.

According to him, the payment of the loan has now become a great challenge to the company due to the constant depreciation of the cedi.

He bitterly indicated that; “The greatest problem is that the total amount of cocoa produced yearly in the country keeps dwindling after they had gone for loans to beef up their production level, through the purchase of the plants.”

“Since 2010-2011 that the country was able to produce 1 million metric tonnes of cocoa beans, it has dwindled to the extent that within the 2014-2015, it produced 740,000 of which was even highlighted in the recent budget read, but out of all the amounts produced yearly, 620,000 tonnes of cocoa is deducted to pay the collateral for the loan,” he added.

According to him, the country’s yearly produce of cocoa has dwindled because most of the farmers have left their jobs since they are not gaining much from their profession.

However, he explained that, after the 620,000 tonnes of cocoa is deducted from the units produced in a particular year, the actual remainder of tonnes left cannot be sufficient for the factories in the country to produce for profit because they need not less than 359,000 metric tonnes of cocoa to get them on course.

Hon. Afriyie Akoto also said that these problems have prevented the Ghana Cocoa Board from providing the required beans needed for their production, which have forced the cocoa processing companies in the country to import raw cocoa beans from Cote d’ivoire to keep them in business.