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Nigeria to boost cocoa production

The government of Nigeria is hoping to triple cocoa production over the next three years with the launch of an ambitious development programme.

Agriculture Minister Adamu Bello said the scheme aimed to boost production from an expected 180,000 tonnes this year to 600,000 tonnes by 2008. The government will pump 154m naira ($1.1m; £591,000) into subsidies for farming chemicals and seedlings. Nigeria is currently the world's fourth-largest cocoa producer.

Cocoa was the main export product in Nigeria during the 1960s. But with the coming of oil, the government began to pay less attention to the cocoa sector and production began to fall from a peak of about 400,000 tonnes a year in 1970. At the launch of the programme in the south-western city of Ibadan, Mr Bello explained that an additional aim of the project is to encourage the processing of cocoa in the country and lift local consumption. He also announced that 91m naira of the funding available had been earmarked for establishing cocoa plant nurseries. The country could be looking to emulate rival Ghana, which produced a bumper crop last year. However, some farmers are sceptical about the proposals. "People who are not farming will hijack the subsidy," said Joshua Osagie, a cocoa farmer from Edo state told Reuters. "The farmers in the village never see any assistance," he added.

At the same time as Nigeria announced its new initiative, Ghana - the world's second largest cocoa exporter - announced revenues from the industry had broken new records. The country saw more than $1.2bn-worth of the beans exported during 2003-04. Analysts said high tech-production techniques and crop spraying introduced by the government led to the huge crop, pushing production closer to levels seen in the 1960s when the country was the world's leading cocoa grower.