Ecobank Sees ‘Decent’ Cocoa Mid-Crops in Ghana, Ivory Coast

Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world’s largest cocoa producers, will have “decent” mid-crops, the smaller of two annual harvests, helped by rains, according to Ecobank Transnational Inc. (ETI)

Farmers in top grower Ivory Coast this year will harvest 325,000 metric tons of cocoa during the mid-crop, which usually starts in April, the Lome, Togo-based lender estimated in a report e-mailed today. Output from April to September in second- ranking Ghana will be 170,000 tons, the bank said.

“From mid-April, there were widespread rains across West Africa, which were particularly strong in Ivory Coast’s southern and eastern cocoa-growing regions,” Edward George, a soft commodities specialist at the bank, said in the report. “These have improved prospects for a decent mid-crop.”

Total output will be 890,000 tons in Ghana, a 13 percent drop from last season, the bank estimates. In Ivory Coast, production is estimated at 1.36 million tons, 9.8 percent lower than last year’s record, according to the report.

Cocoa delivered to ports for export from Ghana fell 8.1 percent to 756,000 tons by May 10 from the same period a year earlier, the bank said. In Ivory Coast, bean deliveries totaled 1.13 million tons by May 20, up 2.1 percent from a year earlier, the bank said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Isis Almeida in London at ialmeida3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Deane at jdeane3@bloomberg.net