<<Print>>

Financial analyst, Sydney Casely-Hayford is calling for the immediate replacement of the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD).

“Consistently, cocoa has been under-performing and there is no reason why we should keep him there,” he said Saturday on Citi FM’s The Big Issue.

President John Mahama appointed Dr Stephen Kwabena Opuni in November 2013 to head COCOBOD.

Under his tenure, however, the cocoa sector, which is Ghana’s leading foreign exchange earner, has been buffeted by several challenges, including fatigue of cocoa trees and an unpredictable rainfall pattern that COCOBOD insiders say destroys cocoa flowers before they become pods.

As a result, Ghana’s yield in the ongoing cocoa season is said to be far below what was anticipated.

Commenting on the development, Sydney Casely-Hayford said Mr Opuni must take responsibility for the challenges facing the sector.

“When you don’t put the right people in positions, people who are business focused enough and don’t understand the impact of what is happening, that is where you have your problems because for you to predict that you will do a certain quantity of tonnage and have a shortfall by so much, you upset the whole international cycle of business.

“Dr. Opuni has supervised this particular prediction in the last two years since he was transferred.” “It is always the institutional head…there are things you must do and if you don’t do them and get them right, the repercussions down the line will hit you,” he said.

Mr Casely-Hayford’s view was echoed by IMANI Ghana CEO, Franklin Cudjoe, who said: “I think the current CEO is a good man, but he is a political ‘hatcher’. “

“…if it was a very civilized economy, nobody would even ask him to leave…we are not focusing on the guy, not at all. We are just saying that he is not the man for the job because he has no commercial experience.”