Consume more cocoa to Boost Nutritional Health- Ghanaians urges
Stakeholders in the cocoa value chain have urged Ghanaians to consume more cocoa for its nutritional health benefits and challenge also companies to boost domestic production and scale efforts to enhance the consumption of cocoa in the country.
Speaking at the launch of this year’s Chocolate week celebration under the theme “Consume Cocoa, Stay Healthy, Grow Ghana” in Accra organised by COCOBOD in collaboration with Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), the Chairman of the Board of Directors of COCOBOD, Mr. Peter Mac Manu commended all the key players in the sector for making the event a memorable on the nation’s calendar.
He said the daily consumption of cocoa products have tremendously made great impact on the nutritional and health needs of Ghanaians therefore cocoa products be recommended as part of a healthy growth towards a sound wellbeing.
He said government have put in place fervent preparations in rolling out more programmes, policies, and initiatives to keep Ghana at a competitive edge of cocoa at the global market.
According to him, the country still produces the premium cocoa in the world and have made giant strides in the global cocoa space and however urged all cocoa related institutions to make inputs towards the celebration as part of the drive to enhance cocoa products for daily consumption.
The Head of Finance and Administration of COCOBOD, Mr. Emmanuel Ray-Ankrah who represented the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of COCOBOD, urged producers of cocoa products to add value addition to increase demand and consumption and called also for a review of the tax regime to pave way for entrepreneurs to venture into the cocoa space.
He however called for the set up of cocoa academy to build the capacities of skills sets and acquisition for industry players as part of the effort to boost total hands on jobs for the cocoa market across the country.
He therefore commended the respective institutions for sustaining the programme which have successfully become an annual event and a household programme in the country and beyond and again called on corporate Ghana to support these laudable celebration.
The Deputy Minister of Tourism and Creative Arts, Mr. Mark Okraku Martey said the celebration of the cocoa week will help boost the consumption of chocolate and other related cocoa based products and also promote as well as create more awareness of the value of cocoa products.
The Minister of Information, Mr. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said the weeklong celebration will help bring on board interested cocoa entrepreneurs to network and share opportunities in the cocoa sector and urge COCOBOD to roll more initiatives to make the sector attractive to locals and foreigners.
He therefore urged all to take advantage of the celebration as part of the effort to showcase cocoa products and its related benefits.
Source : Ben LARYEA
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