Over the next five years, Côte d'Ivoire plans to eradicate illicit cocoa production in order to better control its production and maintain a new minimum price, officials from the government and cocoa regulator told Reuters.

“It’s easy for us. If we are unable to control our cocoa production, it will be difficult to maintain a minimum price and enforce it, because a structural excess of production will lead to lower prices, ”said one of the officials of the Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC), the regulator of Ivory Coast.

Officials said the new measures - the legal framework that should be approved soon by parliament - would include possible imprisonment for those caught catching cocoa in forest reserves and national parks.

The plan is to eliminate illicitly grown cocoa over the next five years. The plan will be announced this week at a meeting in Abidjan, where officials from Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana will discuss with the industry the details of a minimum pricing strategy, said three officials who asked not to be named.

Two leading global producers said last month that they would set a minimum price of $ 2,600 per ton of cocoa on a “free-on-board” basis.