A senior presidential official says Ghana’s cocoa sector was hit by a sharp and unexpected drop in global prices just weeks after the government adjusted the producer price for farmers, creating major financial challenges for the industry.

Dr Peter Boamah Otokunor, Director of Presidential Initiatives in Agriculture and Agribusiness at the Office of the President, said the international cocoa market moved quickly against Ghana shortly after the Mahama administration set a new producer price for the 2025/26 season.

Speaking in an interview with JoyNews’ Gemma Appiah after engagements with cocoa farmers in the Western Region, Dr Otokunor explained that the price slump created a situation where cocoa already purchased by the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) could only be sold at a significant loss.

“The very day we set that price, within two weeks, the price started dropping,” he said.

“In fact, within 30 days, the price had dropped from $7,200 to $5,800.”

The 2025/26 cocoa season opened in August 2025 with a producer price of GH¢51,660 per tonne. That price was pegged at about 70 per cent of the international market price, which was then around $7,200 per tonne.

However, the price was revised upward in October 2025 to GH¢58,000 per tonne after Côte d’Ivoire increased its own producer price sharply, creating a risk that Ghanaian cocoa could be smuggled across the border.

According to Dr Otokunor, Ghana’s production target for the season was about 650,000 metric tonnes. By the time the October adjustment was made, COCOBOD had already purchased approximately 581,000 metric tonnes of cocoa at the higher price.

But with global prices falling sharply afterwards, Ghana found itself holding large volumes of cocoa that could only be sold on the international market at significantly lower prices.

“When you go and buy at the old price, it’s like buying $7,200 per tonne cocoa and going to the market to sell it at $4,200,” Dr Otokunor explained.

“We would be losing over $3,000 per tonne — that means that the government would be losing about $2 billion in all for the cocoa that we had purchased,” he added.

The scale of the challenge was also confirmed by Finance Minister Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson during a press conference on February 12, 2026.

He said the average world market price for cocoa had dropped sharply from about $7,200 per tonne to around $4,100 per tonne, making Ghana’s cocoa less competitive and creating severe liquidity challenges for COCOBOD.

The development has been one of the key factors behind the government’s decision to review the cocoa producer price in recent months.