Global: Cocoa prices hit record high while chocolate prices to rise too

They have been rising all week, fueled by shrinking inventories. In U.S. ports monitored by ICE, a financial and commodity exchange, inventories fell to a 15-year low of 1,998,398 bags on Tuesday, and were even lower on Friday. Ivory Coast’s poor cocoa harvest The rise in cocoa prices is being driven primarily by a very poor harvest in Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer, where cocoa is the livelihood of a quarter of the country’s population. Government data released earlier this week showed that Ivory Coast farmers sent just 12,960 tons of cocoa to ports in the first six days of October, down 50,138 tons from the same period last year. In Ghana, the world's second largest cocoa producer, in August, it was announced that the harvest would be smaller than in previous years, with the production expected to reach 650 thousand tons this season, which would be the lowest in 13 years. Ghana and Ivory Coast account for over 60 percent of global cocoa production The poor harvest is ...