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Ivory Coast Says New Cocoa Rules to Have Little Effect on Deals

Ivory Coast Says New Cocoa Rules to Have Little Effect on Deals

(Bloomberg) -- Ivory Coast’s cocoa regulator said measures which compel shippers to present sales contracts within six days after purchasing beans were not intended to invalidate deals in the world’s top producer of the chocolate ingredient.

In a move to curb speculative trading, the Conseil du Cafe-Cacao told exporters that auction contracts will be canceled if documents aren’t presented, while the beans will be resold before the start of the harvest in October, according to a Sept. 7 document from the regulator obtained by Bloomberg. Shippers who don’t present the documents will be suspended from auctions for a month and pay a penalty of 15 CFA francs (3 cents) per kilogram if the beans from canceled contracts are resold at a loss, the CCC said in the document.

The note “is a reminder to ask exporters to be in compliance with regulation,” CCC Director General Massandje Toure-Litse told reporters Thursday in the commercial capital, Abidjan. The note’s content were misinterpreted, she said, declining to comment further.

The measures were not out of the ordinary while there will be no significant “impact or consequence,” Djibril Fadiga, a deputy director general at the regulator, told reporters.

Ivory Coast will on Sept. 28 announce the fixed per-kilogram price it will pay to cocoa farmers from Oct., Toure-Litse said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Baudelaire Mieu in Abidjan at bmieu@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andre Janse van Vuuren at ajansevanvuu@bloomberg.net, Pauline Bax