The United Party’s (UP) Director of Communications, Solomon Owusu, is insisting that Government should not borrow to shore up cocoa farmers, following the recent challenges confronting the sector.
He believes what goes to the farmers should be reflective of the pertaining international market price.
“Under no circumstance should government go and borrow to come and pay farmers when price on the international market drops,” he said on the BigIssue segment on the NewDay morning show on Wednesday, February 18, 2026.
According to him, taking such a position will adversely affect the economy, explaining that cocoa is not a “key commodity” in the country for funds that would have gone into other developmental projects to be used to cushion the farmers.
“It weakens and destroys the economy. Cocoa is not a key commodity. How many people take cocoa in this country? We are only serving the international market,” he stated, buttressing his point with the annual revenue the country derives from the cash crop.
“In its entirety, cocoa does not give us, on annual basis, more than US$2 billion. We don’t capitalise on the value chain. We only sell the raw beans. We only make US$2 billion from cocoa every year. If you combine the other food crops, we are only way better.”
The cocoa sector, in recent months, has undergone severe hardship where government is finding it difficult to pay farmers and other actors along the value chain.
This has forced the government to reduce the farm gate price of the beans, with a new bill yet to be laid in Parliament to cater for such future occurrences.
Owusu insisted that the proposed reforms announced by the government should be implemented to salvage the sector, which he believes would stabilise the sector going forward.
“What should be done is to implement the proposed solutions. With the announcement of these solutions, those that are buying our raw beans will begin to think twice, stabilise the market and then we’ll go and sleep.”
The UP Director of Communications concluded his submission with some additional proposals where the appointment of politicians to man the sector, should be abolished.
He added that the sector should also be opened for private participation to drive competition.
“We must insist that the product should be processed this time around. We must insist that there should be a pricing formulae this time around, we must insist that we’ll not be sending politicians to our best institutions to just go and mess it up. We must insist that there is private participation in the running of COCOBOD. This is the only way as a country, we can make headway,” he championed.
Cocoa sector crisis: United Party’s Solomon Owusu calls for industry deregulation
