Cocoa Harvest Set To Slide In Malaysia

Key cocoa growers in Malaysia said on Tuesday that they expected a sharply lower mid-year harvest in the year 1997 due to rains which ravaged early fruit-setting on cocoa trees.

However, the Malaysian Cocoa Board, the crop's authority, said it was still hoping for a decent harvest of cocoa beans by the year-end after encouraging signs shown by few plantations using high-yielding cocoa plants.

Growers in Tawau, the main cocoa growing area in Malaysia's eastern Sabah state said torrential rains in December had wiped out most of the fruiting for the mid-year crop.

They added that production for the April/May/June harvest could be 50 to 60 per cent lower if compared with the same period a year ago.

 

"I think it's going to be an ultra-low mid-year crop," said a Tawau cocoa plantation director. He said output from his plantation for the first three months of this year was 15 tonnes while production for April and May was forecast at nine tonnes.