About 100,000 tonnes of cocoa beans have been smuggled out of top grower Ivory Coast so far this season, the regulatory body said, indicating this year's harvest to date is well above 1 million tonnes. A halt to cocoa-buying in Ivory Coast because of sanctions and liquidity problems as its political crisis intensified has spurred smuggling of cocoa through neighbours like Ghana, farmers say, as the alternative is to let it rot on farms.
"We can estimate that around 100,000 tonnes of our cocoa is circulating outside the normal channels," Gilbert Ano, head of the government's management committee for the cocoa sector, said overnight on state TV. If true, then the 919,000 tonnes of cocoa exporters estimate arrived at Ivory Coast ports since the start of the season in October belies a harvest of well over a million tonnes so far.
Sanctions, a cocoa export ban and a liquidity shortage since incumbent Laurent Gbagbo seized the central bank's local branch has left the cocoa industry in chaos as beans pile up in farms or are smuggled out through other channels. Alassane Ouattara - who beat Gbagbo in a November 28 presidential poll certified by the UN but which Gbagbo refuses to concede - has called for a one-month cocoa registration ban to starve his rival of tax revenues.
Cocoa exporters, fearing sanctions by Western powers that recognise Ouattara's win, have played ball. Cocoa farmers near the Ghana border report a large flow of trucks heading into its West African neighbour. Ano said some was being smuggled through rebel-held territory. "There is a certain quantity of cocoa going through (the rebel-held town of) Man, through Liberia, around 10,000 tonnes according to our information," he said.