Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) in charge of Finance and Administration, Ato Boateng, has revealed that the institution is close to launching a new locally financed funding programme aimed at raising working capital from domestic investors through a commercial paper arrangement.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Ghana-UK Investment Summit in London on June 2, Mr. Boateng disclosed that transaction advisors have already been engaged and work is far advanced on the structure of the programme ahead of its rollout.
“We’ve gone very far and hired all the advisors that we need to launch the issuance, so the advisors are really working hard on the structure of the finance, which is almost finalised to address all the regulatory concerns raised by all parties,” he said.
The new financing arrangement forms part of efforts to reduce COCOBOD’s dependence on traditional syndicated loans by sourcing funding within Ghana to support cocoa purchases during the crop season.
According to him, pension funds are expected to serve as one of the major sources of financing under the programme.
“The whole idea is for Cocobod to be able to do this and raise the money internally and we’re looking at three different sources. The first source is the pension funds,” he explained.
Mr. Boateng said pension funds currently manage assets estimated at GH¢100 billion and could dedicate a portion of their investments to the programme under existing regulations.
“The pension funds can place investment up to about 35% of their assets. We could potentially look at 35% of the 100 billion cedis,” he added.
