Ghana abandons plan to cut cocoa farmers' prices

Ghana's government has called off plans to cut how much it pays cocoa farmers and will look at other ways to address volatile market prices, Senior Minister Yaw Osafo-Maafo said on Tuesday. In January, the world's second largest cocoa grower said it would consider pegging farmer prices to 70 percent of the world market price to protect the country's finances.
"We won't do it ... It has been looked at and the decision is that we would not do it," Osafo-Maafo told Reuters on the sidelines of a meeting between West African cocoa regulators and international lenders in Accra. Ghana's regulator Cocobod currently pays farmers 7,600 cedis per tonne of cocoa - the equivalent of about 83 percent of world market prices - leading to a budget deficit of 2 billion cedis. "We believe we can make savings from other areas to make up for the deficit ... We are exploring new strategies," Osafo-Maafo said, without giving further details.