Abbey Pushes $1 Billion Ghana Bond Plan for Cocoa

Ghana is preparing to raise about $1 billion in domestic bonds to finance cocoa purchases for the 2026/27 season, moving the funding into cedis instead of dollars. Randy Abbey, chief executive of the Ghana Cocoa Board, said the board is looking at funding the entire crop. "We are looking at funding the entire crop," Abbey said at the Africa Cocoa Investment Forum in London on Wednesday. He also said, "We believe that the interest rates in Ghana now are at the right place for us to go into the market." About $1 billion is the size of the financing package Ghana expects to raise before the next cocoa season starts around August. The move would replace the foreign-currency borrowing model Ghana has long used, when syndicated loans backed by international commodity traders helped finance seasonal purchases from farmers. Ghana’s choice to sell bonds in cedis instead of dollars is a direct shift away from exposure to foreign-currency borrowing. Authorities are trying to cut that exposure after recent cocoa market swings exposed weaknesses in the financing model. Ghana is the world’s second-largest cocoa producer after Côte d’Ivoire, so the funding structure reaches far beyond one season’s procurement bill. 673 million cedis in accumulated debts at Producer Buying Company, roughly $60 million, show why the financing problem is not abstract. The state-linked buyer is legally required to purchase cocoa from farmers as a buyer of last resort, but it has also reportedly owed farmers around 24 million cedis for more than 9,000 bags of cocoa already supplied. Earlier this year, the government promised to revive Producer Buying Company and restore it as Ghana’s leading cocoa buyer. The new bond plan now sits beside that promise, with the board trying to fund the entire crop while the state buyer remains under debt pressure. April inflation in Ghana rose to 3.4 per cent year-on-year from 3.2 per cent in March, the first monthly increase since December 2024. If borrowing costs stay at the level Abbey described, the market window may be open; if not, the financing shift could be tested before the first beans of the 2026/27 season are bought.