The attention of the management of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has been drawn to a front-page story in the Wednesday, 29th September 2021 edition of your newspaper, with the above-stated headline.
The publication stated that the shipment of Ghana’s cocoa to the global market was under serious threat, as companies involved in the exercise were crying foul over maltreatment meted out to them by the Cocoa Marketing Company (Gh.) Ltd (CMC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of COCOBOD.
Management of COCOBOD finds the allegation ill-considered, false and malicious, and would wish to state the following;
1. CMC has over Sixty (60) years of experience in the shipment of cocoa and performs this role exceptionally with highly skilled and competent staff.
2. All of its operations, including the determination and allocation of shipments, are well defined and structured.
3. These structures do not allow any individual or group of individuals to have undue leverage in determining which shipping lines get freight allocations.
4. As at the date of the publication, neither COCOBOD nor CMC’s attention had been drawn to any such threat(s) and/or intimidation from its staff or have by themselves issued any such threat to any shipping line in the determination and allocations of shipments as alleged by the newspaper.
5. COCOBOD thus requires the paper to make available to it the petition it claims to have in its possession on the alleged threat(s) and intimidation from its staff.
It is clear from the publication that the writer does not understand the business of COCOBOD and its subsidiary, the Cocoa Marketing Company (Gh.) Ltd.
We would, therefore, advise that the paper retracts the publication and offer an unqualified apology to the regulator of Ghana’s cocoa industry – COCOBOD and its subsidiary since such unfounded publications tarnish the hard-earned reputation of Ghana’s cocoa industry in the international business arena.
Should The Inquisitor newspaper fail to do so, COCOBOD and CMC reserve the right to seek appropriate redress.
We urge the general public, especially our cherished stakeholders, to disregard the inaccurate information put out by The Inquisitor newspaper which is all aimed at undermining the progress made by the Board in recent years.
Source: Ghana Web
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