Will the supply of cocoa be sufficient to meet demand? Operators are visibly worried if we rely on prices which have started to rise spectacularly since the beginning of November. These fears of shortage are putting the Ivorian market under pressure.
At the world’s leading supplier of beans, we hope that this season will be better than the previous one which saw the harvest drop by a quarter. But nothing is certain, so world prices soar – on Friday January 3, a tonne for delivery in March traded at more than $11,081 on the New York Stock Exchange – and awaken appetites on the ground.
For several weeks, Ivorian cocoa has seen its price rise in Guinea. The kilo of beans purchased at the fixed price of 1,800 FCFA per kilo from the producer would sell for 4,000 or even 5,000 FCFA at the border. The figures circulating are not officially confirmed, but show 50,000 tonnes which have been marketed illegally over the last three months.
The practice is not new, but at current prices, the margins are increased tenfold, explains an Ivorian exporter who assures that the “phenomenon is more worrying than last year ».
Pressure from intermediaries to adjust prices upwards
If, like him, exporters complain, it is because each kilo, each ton of cocoa that leaves the country smuggled, reduces the volumes available for purchase and fuels the feeling of lack on the market by driving up prices. . Instead of paying a premium of 100 FCFA to his intermediaries, this exporter says he is forced to pay a premium two or three times higher.
If demand remains strong while production will naturally decrease in January-February, without even mentioning the climatic hazards of the moment, the pressure on cocoa stocks could increase and be reflected in these premiums.
Banking constraints
The other difficulty for exporters and manufacturers is that Ivorian banks do not follow their customers when the market rises. In one year, the cocoa prices paid to the producer have almost doubled, but “ no local bank has increased its financing to the same level » assures the representative of a multinational which is partly financed on the Ivorian market.
Without an increase in their working capital, grinders and exporters are sometimes forced to seek other financiers, and run the risk of seeing volumes of cocoa pass under their noses.
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