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Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has debunked and described as “false” and “unfounded” an allegation made by The Inquisitor newspaper against one of its subsidiaries, the Cocoa Marketing Company (Gh.) Ltd (CMC).

The newspaper claimed in a story in its recent publication that the shipment of Ghana’s cocoa to the global market was under threat, as companies involved in the exercise were crying foul over maltreatment by CMC.

But in a press statement issued by COCOBOD in response to the story, its management said the allegation is ill-considered, false and malicious.

CMC, the statement read, has over sixty (60) years of experience in the shipment of cocoa and performs that role exceptionally with highly skilled and competent staff.

All of its operations, including the determination and allocation of shipments, are well defined and structured to prevent any individual or group of individuals from having undue leverage in determining which shipping lines get freight allocations, the press statement further read.

It added that neither COCOBOD nor CMC’s attention had been drawn to any threat(s) and/or intimidation from its staff or have by themselves issued any threat to any shipping line in the determination and allocations of shipments as falsely alleged by the newspaper.

Hence, COCOBOD has asked the newspaper to retract the false story and render an apology.

“We would, therefore, advise that the paper retracts the publication and offer an unqualified apology to the regulator of Ghana’s cocoa industry, COCOBOD, and its subsidiary, since such unfounded publications tarnish the hard-earned reputation of Ghana’s cocoa industry in the international business arena.”

The management of COCOBOD also advised the general public to disregard the inaccurate information put out by the newspaper, which it said, is aimed at undermining the progress made by the Board in recent years.