Ghana's cocoa industry rebounds

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ACCRA, Ghana -- This country, the world's No. 2 cocoa grower, exported more than $1.2 billion worth of the fragrant beans in the 2003-04 season after harvesting nearly 735,000 tons, the West African state's cocoa board announced last week.

It was the highest export revenue ever for the cocoa subsector of Ghana's economy, which saw a boost over the growing season from high-tech production techniques and mass cocoa-spraying by the government of President John Kufuor.

The previous record high came from the 2002-03 season, when Ghana earned about $890 million in export revenues.

Ghana's cocoa production has risen steadily during the political crisis in neighboring Ivory Coast, the world's No. 1 exporter, where the harvest reached 1.34 million tons in the year that ended last September, a 35,000-ton increase from a year earlier.

Ghana is returning steadily to levels reached in the early 1960s, when it was the world's largest cocoa grower. Production dwindled almost to the point of insignificance in the subsequent two decades, however, because of a deadly combination of disease, low prices and bush fires.

Mr. Kufuor's government began the pesticide-spraying program in 2001 to combat black pod and capsid disease, and also introduced a bonus for cocoa farmers.

The rising price of cocoa, now about $1,600 per ton, has brought substantial revenues to the West African state and helped rehabilitate its notoriously poor road network.• Agence France-Presse