Cocoa producers fight to stop plunge in prices

African cocoa producers meeting in Accra, Ghana, have reaffirmed a commitment to destroy some 250,000 mt of cocoa beans in October to shore up the price of the commodity on the world market, PANA reported. Participants in the meeting, which ended on Friday, were Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, the world’s first and third largest producers respectively, as well as Cameroon and Nigeria. They said that each country would set up a monitoring committee headed by the secretary-general of its cocoa producers’ union to make sure the decision is implemented, PANA reported. The decision to burn the beans was taken at a meeting in July after prices fell to a 27-year low of less than US $800 per mt.