Cocoa prices rise over Ebola scare

The world market price for the country’s highest foreign exchange earner, cocoa, has risen to a three-year high of £2,141 per tonne, a new Moody Investors Service report has revealed.

The significant increase in the Liffe futures price of the commodity, according to the report issued this week, was triggered by concerns that the Ebola virus could spread to Ivory Coast or Ghana -- which together account for almost 60 percent of global cocoa production.

The deadly Ebola disease is currently raging in West Africa, with the hardest-hit countries being Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Populous African country Nigeria has also recorded over a dozen cases. Over 3,600 cases have been recorded with some 2,000 deaths

Ghana is the world's second-largest cocoa exporter after Ivory Coast. The Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod), the industry regulator, aims to raise production of cocoa from 800,000 tonnes to an average of 1 million tonnes annually through improved farming methods and better incentives.

The country’s cocoa regulator signed a US$1.7billion loan with international banks this month to finance cocoa purchases for the next cocoa season.

The loan is reported to have been oversubscribed by 15 percent and Cocobod will receive an additional US$200million on demand to be drawn in the first three months of next year.

The Moody’s report cautions that measures to contain spread of the disease could cause labour shortages or disruptions in logistics during the harvesting for most of October.

The report warned that “reduced supply from the world's largest growing region would probably result in a further spike of cocoa prices, which could exceed that seen in 2010. If these conditions persist, we would expect large customers to seek accommodations in trade terms, and some margin pressure could ensue.

“We would also expect working capital needs to increase to fund the higher cost of cocoa inventories, pressuring cash flow and leverage metrics. Nevertheless, at this time we do not expect pressures on financial metrics to be of sufficient magnitude to pose meaningful or lasting credit deterioration,” he said.

For the 2013/2014 season, Cocoa purchases declared to Cocobod reached 750,122 tonnes by May this year.

The purchases, which covered 28 weeks of the 33-week main crop season, were up from 638,654 tonnes declared in the same period last year.

The country is hoping to buy around 850,000 tonnes of cocoa during its October-May main crop harvest, for which funds have been secured.