The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Flagbearer, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has received the report of a special parliamentary select committee that visited Ghana’s cocoa-growing regions to assess first-hand the impact of recent price adjustments and the wider challenges confronting farmers.
The presentation by the NPP Minority in Parliament marks the conclusion of an extensive field engagement across major cocoa-producing areas.
The committee, chaired by Minority Chief Whip Frank Annoh-Dompreh and established on Dr. Bawumia’s initiative, interacted directly with farmers at the farm gate, documenting concerns over falling incomes, delayed payments, rising input costs, and broader structural constraints affecting cocoa production.
The increased the producer price to GH¢3,200 per bag for the 2023/2024 cocoa season.
Though the National Democratic Congress (NDC) promised to pay as much as GH¢7,000 per 64-kilogramme bag, current payments to farmers stand at about GH¢2,587 representing a significant decline.
According to the Minority, the exercise deliberately avoided formal stakeholder meetings in favour of grassroots engagement to capture unfiltered accounts from farmers.
Speaking during the presentation, the committee said their approach was centred on lived experience at the community level.
“Our committee went to the farms, sat under the trees with the farmers, listened to their pain, and brought their voices here today. These are not statistics, these are the stories of Ghanaians who feed the world with their hands,” the committee stated.
Receiving the report, Dr. Bawumia commended the team for what he described as a thorough and compassionate exercise.
He assured that the findings would not be left to “gather dust,” but would be subjected to detailed review by the party’s Agriculture and Food Security policy committee.
He further directed that concrete and actionable policy alternatives be developed for consideration and public communication.
Dr. Bawumia expressed appreciation to the farmers for their openness and reaffirmed his commitment to the cocoa sector, describing it as central to Ghana’s economy and rural livelihoods. He said his forthcoming policy response would be comprehensive and transformative, aimed at restoring confidence in the sector.
He also referenced the NPP government’s record in 2017, when it absorbed the impact of falling global cocoa prices to prevent a reduction in the farmgate price paid to farmers.
He described the intervention as evidence of the party’s commitment to protecting farmers during external shocks, adding that the same approach would guide future policy direction.
“In the coming days, I will make an announcement. What I can tell you today is that the cocoa farmer will not be abandoned. We have a track record, and we will build on it,” Dr. Bawumia said.
He added that cocoa farmers remain a priority in the party’s agricultural agenda, stressing that any future NPP administration under his leadership would focus on reviving and strengthening the sector as a key pillar of national development.
The cocoa industry, which supports an estimated 800,000 farming households and contributes significantly to Ghana’s foreign exchange earnings, has recently come under pressure from price adjustments, rising input costs, delayed COCOBOD payments, and the impact of illegal mining on farmlands.
The Minority’s engagement has been widely seen as both a fact-finding mission and a political signal of concern, with farmer groups welcoming the initiative as a rare instance of direct political attention to their challenges.
