Eric Opoku, the spokesperson for agriculture from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has raised concerns about the significant loss of over 500,000 hectares of cocoa farms in Ghana attributed to the Cocoa Swollen Shoot Viral Disease (CSSVD).

The Member of Parliament for Asunafo South, sees this loss as a failure on the part of the government to effectively execute the Cocoa Rehabilitation Project (CRP).

The CRP, an initiative by the Government of Ghana under the Economic Recovery Program (ERP) supervised by the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), aimed to eradicate diseased and unproductive cocoa trees. The plan was to replace them with hybrid cocoa seedlings to enhance yields.

However, Mr. Opoku, speaking on Eyewitness News on Citi FM, expressed dissatisfaction with the program's execution, stating that the allocated funds were not efficiently utilized.

Mr Opoku continued, emphasizing that the program had not been effectively implemented, and he called for a critical examination of the issues surrounding the Cocoa Rehabilitation Project.

“I have difficulty appreciating the 500,000 hectares that the Chief Executive is talking about because around 2018, specifically in October 2020 when the President launched the cocoa rehabilitation program in Sehwi Wiawso, he indicated that a survey had been conducted by COCOBOD and the period from 2006 to 2017, and the survey indicated that the cocoa swollen shoot disease had covered 17% of all the total farmlands under cocoa production. And the total farmland under cocoa production was estimated at 1.9 million hectares. And so we are talking about 17%… It was something alarming, and we needed immediate action, and that was why Ghana had to go and borrow $600 million for cocoa replanting. So I am surprised that today the disease is consuming as much as 500,000, over 25%.”

“…The program has not been properly implemented… We must interrogate the issues critically,” he stated.