The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has called on President John Dramani Mahama to withhold assent to the Ghana Cocoa Board Bill, 2026, and return it to Parliament for broader consultation, arguing that several provisions could negatively affect cocoa farmers and the wider industry.
The Bill was passed in the last week of July under a Certificate of Urgency, with the NPP arguing that a major piece of legislation affecting about 800,000 cocoa-farming households and millions of Ghanaians should not have been passed without adequate stakeholder consultation.
Addressing a press conference on Sunday 9th August,2026, Co-Chairman for NPP Policy Committee on Agriculture and MP for Offinso South, Hon. Dr. Isaac Yaw Opoku noted that the party does not oppose reforms to the legal framework governing the cocoa sector but is concerned about the process through which the Bill was passed.
He revealed that neither of the two national cocoa farmer associations was consulted, while the concerns of the Licensed Cocoa Buyers Association of Ghana (LICOBAG) were allegedly not incorporated.
“A law made for cocoa farmers, without cocoa farmers, is not reform. It is imposition,” Hon. stated.
The NPP raised particular concerns about Clause 57, which provides that the producer price of cocoa should not be less than 70 percent of the Gross Free On Board (FOB) price realised by the Board.
While welcoming the statutory floor for farmers, the party questioned how the “realised Gross FOB” would be calculated and independently verified.
It argued that unlike the world market price, which is observable on international exchanges, the realised Gross FOB is an internal computation based partly on forward contracts, making it difficult for farmers to independently verify the figure used to determine their entitlement.
The party is asking President Mahama to return the Bill for broader consultation and has urged Parliament, upon reconsideration, to amend what it considers problematic provisions.
It maintained that it supports reform of Ghana’s cocoa sector but cannot support legislation that, in its view, could criminalise legitimate farming practices, penalise farmers for registration gaps, weaken centralised external marketing or tie farmers’ earnings to figures they cannot independently verify.
Vincent Kwofie