Mr. Foster Boateng, the deputy Chief Executive Officer, Operations at the Tree Crop Development Authority (TCDA), has revealed that a new policy prohibiting foreigners from acquiring cashew nuts directly from the farmgate will be implemented soon, making selling the product the sole property of Ghanaians.
Mr. Boateng in an interview disclosed that when the regulation is ultimately implemented, foreigners will only be permitted to buy cashew nuts from the farmgate through registered Ghanaian agents.
“The draft guideline by the TCDA has been reviewed by the Parliamentary Select Committee on Legal Affairs (PSCLA), and is supposed to be laid in parliament soon by the sector minister. It will be passed into law after 21 days when laid in parliament.”
Mr. Foster Boateng
The regulation, as explained by Mr. Boateng, would entrench important ideas and mandates for appropriately developing and regulating other tree crops, such as oil palm and rubber.
The law, he said, also requires the authorites to regulate pricing mechanisms in order to manage farmgate price volatility for tree crop products, adding that, “this will help farmers be more motivated to produce.”
He also noted that; “Within the law, aggregators, processors, exporters and traders in any tree crop commodity will be licensed, as well as developers of planting materials – including nurseries. Already, a pricing formula has been developed by the TCDA for cashew, oil palm and rubber for value chain actors, considering key parameters including exchange rate volatility for trading on the global market.”
Cashew Pricing, World Bank Support
Meanwhile, TCDA has disclosed its discussion commencement with value chain actors in order to register all cashew buyers, stating that the country has roughly 25 large cashew buyers, with the majority coming from India.
Commenting on the current cashew pricing, TCDA revealed that a kilo of cashew was sold for GHC 8.50 at the start of this year, but the price skyrocketed to nearly GHC 13 at the start of the second quarter due to demand and supply market pressures.
The price increase, as communicated by TCDA, was implemented when local producers met the agreed minimum threshold of 10% moisture content and a kernel outturn ratio (KOR) of 46 pounds, among other criteria. However, prices began to decline in April of this year, when Ivory Coast, the region’s largest cashew producer, released the commodity onto the market just as Ghana’s quality standards began to deteriorate in the second quarter of this year.
More so, it can be recalled that the Global lender, World Bank, announced earlier this year the grant of a US$100 million credit facility to expand cashew, coconut, and rubber production – to improve the value chain as part of the Tree Crop Diversification Project, a six-year funding project.
