Cocoa arrivals at ports in top grower Ivory Coast have inched ahead of last year despite a political crisis threatening to tip the country back into civil war, exporters said on Monday. Some 577,000 tonnes of beans made it from the farms to port by December 26 since the start of the season in October, up from 565,122 tonnes last year, according to a consensus estimate by exporters, who count truckloads arriving to the docks.
"It is true that the country is facing political difficulty, but we are trying to do what we can. The cocoa has been available in large quantities for a while now and our objective is to export it the best we can," said an official at an export company in San Pedro. Ivory Coast has been in turmoil since a November 28 election in which both incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and his rival Alassane Ouattara claimed victory, sparking a violent stand-off the UN says has killed more than 170 people. Fears of a disruption to supplies have raised cocoa futures to four-month highs in recent weeks.
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