APROMPRON, Ivory Coast, Nov 18 - Unlicensed shipments of Ivorian cocoa to neighbouring Ghana have fallen as merchants within Ivory Coast are paying more for beans, buyers and transporters said on Tuesday.
When prices within the world's biggest grower Ivory Coast are low, some sellers take beans into Ghana, where they are paid 600 CFA francs ($1.16) per kg, but rising internal prices are discouraging cross-border trade.
"We're coming to buy right now because the price in the bush is more than 550 CFA francs. That's stopped beans going over the border," said a cocoa buyer in the eastern town of Abengourou.
"The price in Abidjan is good and we can pay more because the quality is good, but if the price in Abidjan falls and the difference between the price in Ghana and Ivory Coast goes beyond 75 francs, people will prefer to sell in Ghana," he said.
Beans are changing hands for around 610 CFA francs per kg in Abdijan, merchants said, while the most recent data from government marketing body the Coffee and Cocoa Bourse (BCC) put the price in San Pedro port at 590 francs, up from the previous week.
Benchmark world prices as set in New York <CCH9> have also ticked up in the past week, from $1,954 per tonne at the close on Nov. 11 to $1,993 by 1149 GMT on Tuesday.
"Everything depends on the price in Abidjan because if there's at least 75 or 100 francs difference between the two, cocoa goes sometimes to Ghana, sometimes to Ivory Coast, that's how it works here," said Firmin Kouaho, who works in the cocoa transport business in Aprompron, a village close to the Ghanaian border. "The price is the most important thing."
Some sacks of beans made their way over the border in the days after the cocoa farmers' blockade on material leaving the bush ended earlier this month, but rising prices have put a stop to that, he said.
"Bit by bit cocoa started going there (Ghana) since it started coming out, but it's not like that any more. It's not going there in great volumes like it did in 2003, 2004 and 2006," Kouaho said.