Ghana’s industry regulator announces the introduction of tamper-proof scales. Again. COCOBOD Announced that they had concluded the procurement process to purchase 40,000 of the devices, which it says are designed to be tamper-proof.
It is not the first time COCOBOD has announced that they will buy electronic scales to counter fraudsters, but it is the first time they have confirmed that the procurement has now been agreed upon.
The regulator won’t purchase the equipment; that will be up to the licensed buying companies (LBCs) The announcement comes on the back of the country producing a record quantity of 1.033 million tonnes of cocoa, Beating the previous record of 1.024m from 2011.
I’m not sure why the introduction of electronic weighing scales didn’t happen years ago. There is no technical reason, so perhaps the political will must have been lacking.
By not doing this sooner, the country leaves itself open to criticisms of being hypocritical. They complain that the big chocolate companies don’t respect The Living income differential designed to help lift cocoa farmers from poverty. Yet, they have also failed to implement such essential fraud prevention to protect their farmers.
We know that the cost to the Farmers of this fraud has been high; else, how could the regulator justify the purchase of 40,000 electronic scales.
But perhaps that is why the country seems to be taking more significant action, including replacing the board of directors at COCOBOD and introducing new thinking, including increasing internal processing output in an attempt to move up the value chain.
