The nation’s cocoa processors, yesterday said they wantt the government to set up an industry regulator to boost earnings from the crop.
“We are asking for the government to set up an agency, an authority to monitor and provide the legal framework for this industry to operate,” Akin Olusuyi, president of the association known as Copan, told Bloomberg by phone yesterday from Ile-Oluji in Ondo State.
The absence of such a regulator has led to a “very high distortion” in the pricing of cocoa beans in the country, with international buyers going as far as farm gates to buy the produce, he said. “In Ghana, such buyers stay at the port areas to buy, but here, nobody cares because there is no regulatory body.”
Nigeria ranks behind the Ivory Coast, Ghana and Indonesia as the world’s largest cocoa producer, according to the International Cocoa Organisation. Ghana’s cocoa industry is regulated by the country’s Cocoa Board, while the Coffee and Cocoa Bourse regulates the industry in Ivory Coast.
Cocoa is Nigeria’s second-biggest foreign-exchange earner after crude oil, according to figures published by the Nigerian government. Exports of cocoa products from the country rose 47 percent to $822.8 million in 2010, Olakunle Akingbola, business development manager of Cobalt International Services, an inspection company, said on June 2. That represented about 35 percent of $2.32 billion earnings from non-oil exports, Akingbola said.
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