$840m Cocoa Loan hits BoG’s Account

More than half of the US$1.5 billion cocoa loan syndication has hit the accounts of the Bank of Ghana.

The US$840 million received by BoG last week would boost the country’s Gross International Reserves (GIR), improve the country’s balance of payments as well as support the Cedi.

The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) last month signed a US$1.5 billion syndicated loan facility for the 2021/2022 cocoa crop season to finance cocoa purchases and other related operational activities in the crop season.

Currently, the country’s reserves stands at US$11.442billion representing 5.2months of import cover for the first eight months of 2021, according to the Bank of Ghana’s economic and financial data report.

A total of 28 institutions, made up of local and international financial institutions, participated in this year’s syndication, including Standard Chartered, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

The loan facility, which has an interest rate plus libor of 1.1 %, is repayable in seven months, beginning from February through to August and would help purchase a projected 950,000 metric tonnes of cocoa.

COCOBOD has consistently and successfully, through the pre-export syndicated finance facility, obtained a receivables-backed syndicated loan each year from the international money market to finance its cocoa purchases.