The Ghana COCOBOD has said it is stepping up efforts to combat cocoa smuggling in the country, which saw a significant loss of over 150,000 metric tons in 2023.
The Ashanti Regional Administrator for COCOBOD, William Prempeh, has confirmed that about 3000 bags of smuggled cocoa were intercepted in early March.
He added that COCOBOD’s anti-smuggling task force, working with security agencies, is focusing on border areas prone to smuggling activities.
According to him, the smuggling routes through the Volta and Eastern regions are being closely monitored by a joint task force, which includes the army and the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB).
“Only we’ve realized that some of their cocoa is smuggled through the Volta Region area and in the Eastern Region areas. So, there’s a collaboration between Ghana COCOBOD, the army and the BNI. So, we started monitoring those places.
“All over the world, smuggling happens, but smuggling cocoa is more or less like smuggling the blood of the country. Now, based on the time that we started doing that, we’ve been intercepting some recently. We just intercepted more than about 3000 bags. So, that’s part of the step,” he said
William Prempeh urged the public to remain vigilant and report any suspicious activities, emphasizing that combating cocoa smuggling is a collective responsibility.
“Smuggling cannot be detected if there’s no tip-off. We should all have this ownership. We should own cocoa as ours so much that when you know that this cocoa being smuggled is going to affect the foreign exchange of this country, then I will give a tip-off. But we need the help of Ghanaians. Let us think about the future,” he said.
William Prempeh’s statements were made during a student sensitization program in Kumasi, highlighting the critical role of cocoa in Ghana’s economy and the collective responsibility to protect this vital resource.
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
