The Director of Communications of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Richard Ahiagbah, has charged the Government to stop blaming the Akufo-Addo administration for the cocoa sector crisis and resolve it.
According to him, after fourteen months in office, the Government cannot continue to blame its predecessor.
” You have been in power for fourteen months, fix the problem,” he said on TV3’s The KeyPoints on February 21.
He added that the current challenges cannot be blamed on the previous administration.
“What is happening is because COCOBOD took a decision that has backfired. Not the doing of the previous administration,” Mr Ahiagbah said.
He noted that the Management of COCOBOD should have been honest with the cocoa farmers.
“They should have confessed to the farmers and apologized for getting it wrong,” he said.
Mr Ahiagbah’s comments were in reaction to a statement made by the Majority in Parliament on February 19.
They lashed out at the Minority in Parliament for calling for a bailout for cocoa farmers amid a GHC60 million debt owed by the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD).
Chairman of Parliament’s Finance Committee, Isaac Adongo, argued that with such debt and financial distress, it is impossible for COCOBOD to borrow additional money from international capital markets to fund a bailout for cocoa farmers.
“COCOBOD entered 2025 with roughly GH¢17.8 billion in loans plus operational liabilities. So loans alone were about GH¢17.8 billion by the beginning of 2025.
“If you add this to other obligations, you will soon come to realise that at this point, COCOBOD was bleeding with an exposure of about GH¢60 billion,” he said.
“Certainly, that vehicle could not be sustainable and needed to be addressed,” he added.
“You have GH¢60 billion of somebody’s money. It’s not free money. You are not paying, and you are saying that we should continue to even to go and borrow more,” he noted, rejecting the Minority’s call for a bailout for cocoa farmers.
The Minority has proposed that the government release emergency liquidity support to COCOBOD, enabling the country’s nearly one million cocoa farmers to be paid promptly.
Isaac Adongo stressed that restoring financial discipline and restructuring the cocoa sector is a far more sustainable solution than relying on borrowing which he said will collapse the institution.
Adongo emphasised the need for systemic reforms that strengthen COCOBOD’s financial footing, stating that the Mahama administration is resetting the coca sector.
“These are the people who read the Bible in reverse. And these are the people advising us to add debts when we cannot even pay GHC60 billion. And because we have kept quiet somehow, they think this illogical argument they are advancing will save the people of Ghana. We’re resetting the cocoa sector,” he stressed.
