Ghana raises cocoa main crop forecast

ACCRA (Reuters) - Ghana's cocoa sector regulator raised its forecast for the main crop by 100,000 tonnes to 850,000 on Tuesday as data showed volumes were nearly 40 percent ahead of the same point last year.

The new forecast puts the world number two grower on track to produce 900,000 tonnes this year, just as the sector in top producer Ivory Coast has been crippled by a post-election power struggle that has driven cocoa futures to 30-year highs.

Declared purchases by private cocoa buyers to industry regulator Cocobod reached 700,844 by February 17, figures released by Cocobod showed.

Cocobod Deputy Chief Executive Yaw Adu-Ampomah raised to 850,000 tonnes from 750,000 tonnes the target for purchases during the October-June main crop in Ghana.

"The weather situation now is far more favourable than we had anticipated and based on what we are seeing so far on the field, we believe the main crop alone will fetch 850 (850,000 tonnes)," he told Reuters.

"We still have good volumes of pods on the trees waiting to be harvested -- it's been a good season generally," he added.

Ghana is also expected to produce 50,000 tonnes from the light crop, mostly sold to local processors, so this year's tally should hit about 900,000.

Adu-Ampomah said weekly purchases, which had dipped to some 7,500 tonnes, would soon pick up. "We expect it to settle around at least 10,000 (tonnes) in the remaining weeks," he said.

Ivory Coast has also enjoyed a bumper crop but has been paralysed by a post-election crisis that is pushing it to the brink of a new war and sanctions imposed on the incumbent have forced the main exporters to stop doing business there.

ICE cocoa futures hit a fresh 32-year high of $3,706 a tonne on Tuesday, as political uncertainty continued to plague the country's cocoa industry.

In its pre-season forecast last October, Cocobod projected buying around 710,000 tonnes of cocoa in the crop year but later reviewed the figure upwards to a record 800,000 tonnes.

Ghana is hoping to produce one million tonnes by the 2012/13 season by significantly increasing fertilizer use, stepping up disease and pest control, and paying farmers better prices.

(Source: http://af.reuters.com/article/investingNews/idAFJOE7200HM20110301?sp=true)