Top cocoa producer Ivory Coast is aiming to process 50 percent of its cocoa crop inside the country within the next decade, up from about 30 percent now, Guillaume Soro, President of the National Assembly of the Ivory Coast said on Tuesday. "In the next five to 10 years, we will rise to the challenge to process 50 percent inside the country," he said in an interview during a visit to London.
Ivory Coast has traditionally exported its cocoa beans to countries such as the Netherlands and Germany where they are processed into cocoa butter and powder which are used to make items such as toiletries, ointments and chocolate. The cocoa processing capacity in the West African country has, however, risen sharply in recent years.
The International Cocoa Organisation estimates that it processed 560,000 tonnes or around 30 percent of its 1.76 million tonne crop, in 2014/15 and overtook the Netherlands as the world's top cocoa processing country. "We are undertaking some structural reforms, like with our investment code, which allows us to attract more investors in order to push ahead with the industrialisation of Ivory Coast," Soro said. "The second aspect is that we talk to the biggest cocoa exporters and tell them that rather than exporting everything, that they should launch their own programme to transform and to do some of their processing in our country." Soro said he would also be encouraging the Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC) to publish more information of the flow of cocoa into ports and shipments out of the country.