In view of the difficulties in supplying cocoa to national players, the Ivorian Traders Group(GNI) has once again renewed its request to the Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC) to establish a rule for the equitable distribution of certified cocoa contracts. This will not only end the monopoly of multinationals but also allow for healthy competition between these multinationals and national players.
For the actors of the Ivorian Traders Group, which includes about fifteen (15) small exporters and grinders in Côte d’Ivoire and which has an estimated purchasing and export capacity of 300,000 tonnes of cocoa beans, the regulator must impose an equal distribution of contracts for certified cocoa. They denounce the fact that six (6) multinationals based in Ivory Coast hold a monopoly and buy most of the cocoa crop each year to the great displeasure of local actors.
Thus, according to the group’s press release dated 25 February 2023, the current situation can be summarised in 3 points:
When the market rises, the multinationals, through the certification premiums that they alone hold, capture most of the certified or ordinary cocoa, even beyond the volumes allocated to them, in violation of the rules of internal marketing, with the aim of carrying out massive exports of cocoa beans instead of nationals.
Indeed, nationals with funding who have not speculated as in 2017 are reduced to buying only ordinary (non-certified) cocoa. Without certification premiums, nationals cannot compete with multinationals that buy all cocoa, both certified and regular, directly or through their cooperatives.
The multinationals, holding surplus cocoa stocks thanks to their certification premiums, are putting pressure on the CCC to reallocate contracts for the release of nationals, with the aim of exporting their surplus stocks at the greatly increased market price.
In view of this situation, the GNI fully supports the CCC’s current management of the issue, in particular its decision to cap multinationals’ purchases strictly to their initial release volumes, as required by internal marketing rules.
The GNI reiterates its request to the CCC to establish a fair distribution rule for certified cocoa contracts to allow for healthy competition between multinationals and national players. Only such a measure will definitively solve the problem of supplying nationals and integrate them into the marketing circuit of certified cocoa from which they are excluded by the multinationals. Were it not for their exclusion from certified cocoa, domestic exporters have the financial and logistical capacity and experience to export twice the volumes they do today.
