Cocoa delays hitting Ivory Coast

Cocoa is Ivory Coast's key export crop

The start of the new cocoa harvesting season in Ivory Coast has been delayed due to a dispute over how many levies farmers must pay to industry bodies.

Ivory Coast is the world's biggest cocoa producer and with growers protesting on the streets, President Laurent Gbagbo has promised to act.

According to the BBC's James Copnall in Abidjan, the growers do not trust the three main trade bodies and vice versa.

President Gbagbo proposes the creation of a central government body for cocoa.

"We are not ready for the opening of the new season on October 1 as usual," said Louise Akoua, commodities advisor to the prime minister and member of a government commodities committee.

Key crop

As well as setting up a new government body to try and stabilise the industry, Ms Akoua said the government was working on finding a levy amount that was acceptable to both sides.

The three main Ivory Coast cocoa trade bodies are the Coffee and Cocoa Bourse marketing body (BCC), the FDPCC development fund and the Regulatory and Control Fund (FRC).

Semi-private, they were created when the cocoa sector was liberalised in 2000, replacing the then state-run agencies regulating the sector.

The latest disagreement centres on the fact that a minimum-pricing scheme was abandoned in 2000 in favour of a sliding levy scale which returns funds to growers should they be affected by heavy losses on the global markets.

Many Ivory Coast growers prefer the old minimum price system, saying the newer method does not offer them suitable protection.

Some six million of Ivory Coast's 17 million population rely either directly or indirectly on cocoa, which together with coffee represents 40% of the country's export revenues.

In addition to the latest dispute, the industry has been far from helped by the civil war that has split Ivory Coast in two since September 2002.