COCOBOD's debt fell to GH¢30.55 billion (US$2.61bn at GHS 11.69, Bank of Ghana, 13 November) at August 2026, from GH¢32.5 billion in March 2025, says the 2027 Budget Statement (paragraph 1147).
That is GH¢1.95 billion, or 6.0%, in 17 months. The debt is still larger than a full season's farmgate bill: buying 690,000 tonnes, last season's purchases (paragraph 1146), at this season's GH¢42,400 a tonne would cost GH¢29.26 billion. That comparison is illustrative: it mixes last season's purchase volume with this season's producer price.
The Budget (paragraph 1147) adds that cocoa-roads liabilities "were rationalised from GH¢21 billion to GH¢6.9 billion following a joint field verification exercise", and that ongoing road projects have moved to the Ministry of Roads and Highways.
Roads are the main reason COCOBOD got into trouble: it awarded up to GH¢26.5 billion of road contracts between 2014 and 2024, GH¢21.5 billion of them in the three crop years to 2020/21, according to the Finance Ministry's own cocoa briefing of 12 February 2026.
The catch is that the same February briefing tells a different story. It says GH¢6.9 billion was the target agreed under the 2023 IMF programme, which the previous management never met. The completed joint exercise, it says, cut exposure from GH¢21.7 billion to GH¢4.35 billion, and Cabinet ordered that GH¢4.35 billion be transferred to the Roads Ministry.
The Budget's GH¢6.9 billion is GH¢2.55 billion, or 58.6%, higher than that February outcome, and the starting points also differ slightly (GH¢21 billion in the Budget, GH¢21.7 billion in February). If the Budget is restating the 2023 IMF target, the two figures are not like-for-like: one is a programme target, the other is the ministry's stated result of the later verification.
If both are offered as the outcome of that verification, they disagree by GH¢2.55 billion, and the Budget does not explain why.
Verdict: partly right. The debt reduction is stated plainly and is modest. The roads claim uses the same GH¢6.9 billion figure as the old IMF target and does not mention the lower GH¢4.35 billion the ministry gave in February as the result of the exercise.
A second slippage sits in the same documents. In February, Cabinet directed that "beginning from the 2026/27 crop season, a minimum of 50%" of beans be processed locally.
The Budget (paragraph 330) now sets 50% by 2028 and 100% by 2030. Reuters, reporting the Budget speech, put current local processing at 30–40%; that is a secondary report, not an official figure.
At the pace of the past 17 months, about GH¢115 million a month, clearing the remaining debt would take 22 years. The February plan to convert about GH¢5 billion owed to the Finance Ministry and Bank of Ghana into equity would move faster, but the Budget does not say whether Parliament approved it or whether it is in the August figure.
Related: cocoa prices versus the Budget's recovery claim; Friday commodity wrap.