New Cocoa Board Law Will Hurt Farmers

The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has called on President John Dramani Mahama to withhold his assent to the Ghana Cocoa Board Bill, 2026, describing it as a “good cause undone by a bad process” that contains provisions which will harm the very farmers it claims to protect.

The Bill, which repeals PNDCL 81 and establishes a new legal framework for the cocoa sector, was laid before Parliament on 28th July and passed within the same week under a Certificate of Urgency – a timeline the NPP says excluded those most affected.

“No law passed this year touches more households: some 800,000 farming families, three million Ghanaians, two billion dollars a season,” the party’s Policy Secretariat said in a statement released on Sunday .

“Legislating without the farmer”

Addressing journalists in Accra, the NPP expressed concern that neither national cocoa farmer association was consulted during the legislative process, and the Licensed Cocoa Buyers Association of Ghana’s (LICOBAG) formal concerns were not incorporated.

“Neither the national cocoa farmer association was consulted, LICOBAG’s formal concerns were not incorporated, and the Cocoa Hauliers Association was not consulted at all,” the statement said.

The party noted that the 2026 Bill differs materially from the 2025 version reviewed by the committee, with Members of Parliament passing “a text no stakeholder had seen.”

“A law made for cocoa farmers, without cocoa farmers, is not reform. It is imposition,” the statement declared.

Provisions under scrutiny

The NPP raised specific concerns about Clause 4 of the Bill, which they argue contains a loophole that could undermine its stated purpose of confining COCOBOD to cocoa regulation and marketing.

“Clause 4(a) is sound: it confines COCOBOD to the regulation, development, marketing, quality assurance, traceability, pricing and export of cocoa. That is the discipline it has lacked,” the party said.

“Clause 4(b) undoes it. COCOBOD may assume another Ministry’s responsibilities by enactment, or with the prior approval of the Minister. That final limb is the loophole: a restriction a Minister can lift is not a restriction, but a formality.”

The party recommended that any expansion of COCOBOD’s mandate should require an Act of Parliament, not a ministerial signature.

Pricing formula concerns

While the NPP welcomed the statutory floor of 70 per cent of the Gross Free On Board (FOB) price for farmers, they questioned how this figure would be computed and verified.

The statement noted that the language had changed from “world market price” – observable on international exchanges – to “realised Gross FOB”, an internal computation which the party said could be “a promise with the arithmetic withheld.”

“To tie the farmer’s entitlement to a denominator only one party can calculate is not a guarantee. It is a promise with the arithmetic withheld,” the statement said.

The party demanded that the computation and underlying contracts be published each season and independently audited, with farmers seeing the numbers before prices are announced.

External marketing fears

The NPP expressed alarm at Clause 59, which permits licensing of private exporters for external marketing – currently the preserve of the Cocoa Marketing Company.

“Our greatest advantage is that we sell as one seller,” the party argued. “Centralised marketing through CMC underpins our forward sales programme, our price stabilisation, our quality premium, and our ability to negotiate jointly with Cote d’Ivoire.”

“Fragment the seller and we surrender our only leverage,” it warned.

Demands

The NPP called on the President to withhold assent and return the Bill for broader consultation, while making a series of specific demands for Parliament to address on reconsideration.

These include narrowing Clause 4(b) to ensure that any expansion of COCOBOD’s mandate would require a full enactment rather than ministerial approval, and publishing and independently auditing the realised Gross FOB figures each season so farmers can verify the pricing formula. The party also demanded that external marketing remains vested in the Cocoa Marketing Company to preserve Ghana’s unified selling power.

Further demands include amending Clause 81 to exempt routine farm removals carried out under COCOBOD’s own published agronomic guidelines, deferring Clause 85(2) until the Minister can certify that farmer registration is substantially complete so that farmers are not penalised for administrative delays, and clearly stating the price basis on which beans will be sold to local processors to reconcile the local processing threshold with the guaranteed producer price floor.

COCOBOD has meanwhile launched a nationwide stakeholder engagement campaign to educate participants about the new law, including cocoa farmer organisations, civil society groups, and LICOBAG .

“Ghana’s cocoa industry was built over a century by families who planted trees that would not bear for five years,” the NPP statement concluded. “They are owed better than a law made in haste, in their absence.”