Ghana’s Parliament OKs $1.2B Loan For Cocoa Purchase

Written by Ann Brown

Jul 21, 2013

Ghana’s Parliament on Friday went into recess after nine weeks of sitting, with the House approving a trade finance facility of $1.2 billion for the purchase of cocoa beans for the 2013/2014 season.

The credit facility is an arrangement between the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) and a consortium of several international and local banks to enable COCOBOD raise adequate funds to purchase 830,000 tonnes of cocoa from farmers for the crop season.

The lenders include the bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Credit Agricole Corporation and Investment Bank, First Rand Bank Limited, Nedbank Limited and Societe General.

The syndicated trade-backed facility will cost COCOBOD an amount of $14.08 million.

But the Minority side of the House was livid when the finance ministry presented the paper on the trade facility to the House. The side wondered why the ministry chose to lay such an important financial agreement on the day the legislature was going on recess.

They argued that when such occurrences took place, members did not have enough time to scrutinize such arrangements properly because of the haste and urgency with which those agreements are approved.

The House also approved a request to waive stamp duty on the facility to ensure that the full value of credit is available to COCOBOD for the cocoa purchases.