A Board Member of the Ghana Cocoa Board, Mr. Emmanuel Kwame Gyamfi, says the government has spent 97 billion cedis on the mass cocoa spraying exercise this year. He said the government spent 315 billion cedis on cocoa fertilizer Hi-Tech programme as loans to farmers in the 2003/2004 cocoa season out of which 27 billion cedis had been recovered from the farmers. Mr Gyamfi was speaking at the 6th annual farmers award ceremony of the Produce Buying Company (PBC) on Wednesday. Fifty-one cocoa farmers drawn from Sunyani, Berekum and Dormaa districts were awarded with Wellington boots, solar energy torch lights, cutlasses, cassette players and certificates of merit. Mr Gyamfi said the government had released 179 billion cedis to be disbursed as bonuses to cocoa farmers this year and 2,731 children of farmers were given COCOBOD scholarships worth 15 billion cedis in 2005. Mr Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, the Brong-Ahafo Regional Minister, said the government was determined to enhance not only the capacity of farmers but also infrastructure such as road networks linking the various communities and rural electrification. He said the government recognised the important role that farmers played in accelerating national development and since cocoa was the bedrock of the country's economy there was the need to assist cocoa farmers to ensure that they produced abundant yield. Mr. Baffour-Awuah appealed to PBC to be honest with cocoa farmers in their transactions and help them to engage in alternative and other forms of investment. Mr Ben Tawiah Manor, Senior Manager at the Research, Monitoring and Evaluation of PBC said a total of 1,648 farmers of the company had been awarded nationwide. He said adequate preparation in terms of both logistics and funding had been made for the cocoa season and encouraged the farmers to report any cases of non-payment for cocoa delivered to the district managers. Source: GNA