Former Energy Minister Dr Kwabena Donkor has called for the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) to be restructured into separate regulatory and commercial entities to address what he described as years of poor management and structural inefficiency.
In an exclusive interview with The High Street Journal published on Monday, 16 February 2026, Dr Donkor, who also served as Member of Parliament for Pru East, said COCOBOD has suffered from persistent mismanagement spanning five to six years, leaving the institution technically insolvent.
He argued that the concentration of regulatory and commercial roles within a single institution has made COCOBOD too large, too complex, and too insulated from effective oversight. Dr Donkor said when the same body sets the rules and also plays in the market, accountability becomes blurred.
Central to his reform proposal is the separation of COCOBOD’s regulatory functions from its marketing operations. He said the institution currently regulates quality and pricing, licenses buyers, markets Ghana’s cocoa internationally, oversees production support programmes, and finances operations, creating inherent conflicts of interest.
Dr Donkor described the current crisis at COCOBOD as long standing, noting that the financial distress and mounting debt were visible years ago. He pointed to the board’s growing dependence on bond issuance to survive, with new bonds issued to repay maturing bonds, raising concerns about liquidity and sustainability.
COCOBOD has been totally and poorly managed over the years, Dr Donkor said. This is not an issue of one year or two years. Over the last five or six years, some of us have been calling for reforms in the cocoa board because the cocoa board was technically bankrupt.
He proposed dividing COCOBOD into a minimum of two entities. The first would be a public regulatory authority responsible solely for regulation, quality control, licensing, pricing frameworks, and enforcement. The second would be a separate commercial entity handling marketing, production support, and trading functions.
Dr Donkor said such a split would introduce clarity of purpose and strengthen governance. He argued that an independent regulatory body could enforce minimum working capital requirements, tie licensing to financial capacity, and ensure that Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs) and pre-financiers are paid on time. It could also impose penalties where contractual obligations are breached.
If the regulatory function were separate, it would regulate even the financial viability of players, Dr Donkor said. You must have a certain minimum working capital. You will be licensed and your license will depend on your capacity. All players, not just LBCs. And it will have been part of its role to ensure that people who pre-finance, buyers, LBCs, and the rest, are paid on time by the marketer. If you fail, you pay a penalty.
The comments come as the government announced sweeping reforms to the cocoa sector following an emergency Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, 11 February 2026. Finance Minister Dr Cassiel Ato Forson revealed that a careful review of the cocoa sector over the last eight years exposed gross mismanagement requiring immediate and comprehensive reforms.
Cabinet has directed the Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Dr Dominic Ayine, to commission concurrent forensic and criminal investigations into COCOBOD’s activities over the last eight years. The government is targeting a debt stock that has ballooned to GHC32.9 billion.
COCOBOD Chief Executive Officer Randy Abbey acknowledged that the institution faces its most precarious position in nearly 80 years of operation. Mr Abbey revealed he inherited a negative equity position of GHC3.8 billion, the first in the board’s history, where liabilities significantly exceeded assets.
As part of the reforms, the government will introduce a new COCOBOD Bill to Parliament prohibiting the institution from engaging in quasi fiscal expenditures. The bill will introduce an automatic adjustment of producer prices, guaranteeing farmers a minimum of 70 percent of the gross Free On Board (FOB) price.
The Producer Price Review Committee (PPRC) reduced the farmgate price to GHC41,392 per tonne from GHC58,000, equivalent to GHC2,587 per bag, effective Thursday, 12 February, after world prices fell to approximately 4,100 United States dollars per tonne from an average of 7,200 dollars.
The government has also decided to scrap the 30 year old international syndicated loan model in favor of domestic cocoa bonds. This revolving fund model aims to repay proceeds within each crop year, decoupling the sector from international lenders who grew wary of COCOBOD’s insolvency.
Cabinet has directed COCOBOD to immediately pay all outstanding amounts owed to cocoa farmers. The government will also seek parliamentary approval to convert about GHC5.8 billion of legacy debt owed to the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Ghana into equity. Road related liabilities of GHC4.35 billion will be transferred to the Ministry of Roads and Highways.
From the 2026 to 2027 crop season, at least 50 percent of Ghana’s cocoa beans must be processed locally. Cabinet has directed that the remainder of the 2025 to 2026 crop be allocated for local processing.
Dr Donkor’s proposal for structural separation aims at ensuring oversight that would reduce systemic risk, improve confidence, and restore discipline across the sector. For farmers, this could mean more predictable payments, and for buyers, greater certainty, he suggested.
The cocoa sector remains strategically important to Ghana’s economic identity. Ghana is the world’s second largest cocoa producer after Côte d’Ivoire. The sector employs approximately 800,000 smallholder farmers and contributes significantly to foreign exchange earnings.
