Cote d'Ivoire

Ivory Coast’s cocoa regulator said indebted cocoa exporter Saf-Cacao and its lenders have not proposed repayment plans for the company, which is now undergoing liquidation, according to a memo sent this week by the regulator to the government, Bloomberg News reported. Le Conseil du Cafe-Cacao had “no choice” but to seek the judicial recovery of 75.6 billion CFA francs ($133 million) owed by the Saf group, the regulator said in the document sent to Bloomberg by the Ivory Coast government’s communications department.

Heavy debt exposure to Ivory Coast’s largest domestic cocoa exporter, which has been ordered into liquidation, risks destabilizing the West African nation’s banking sector, bank officials said on Tuesday. A court on July 18 ordered the liquidation of the SAF-Cacao group of companies, which includes exporter CIPEXI and processor CHOCO-IVOIRE, over unpaid debts to the Ivorian marketing board, the Coffee and Cocoa Council, Reuters reported.

A court in Ivory Coast has ordered the liquidation of SAF-Cacao, the top exporter in the world-leading cocoa grower, over debts owed to the Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC) marketing board, the company’s chief executive told Reuters. The court order was issued on July 18 and an administrator has already been named to manage the process, Ali Lakiss said by telephone from the company’s headquarters in the second port city of San Pedro, Reuters reported. “We are still fighting to survive,” he said.

Lenders in Ivory Coast are lobbying the government to help turn around the liquidation of one of the country’s biggest cocoa exporters that has left banks exposed to more than $260 million in unpaid debt, according to three people familiar with the matter. An application for the liquidation of Saf-Cacao was granted last week in a court in the western town of Sassandra, said the people, who asked not to be named because they’re not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, Bloomberg News reported.

Slumping cocoa prices are testing to the limit top producer Ivory Coast’s efforts to ensure stability for farmers, heightening risks for the domestic economy and world markets, Bloomberg News reported. Authorities have warned they’ll have to cut payments to growers. That follows a wave of defaults by local exporters who’d bet on higher prices, costing the government more than $300 million and pushing cocoa futures even lower.

Felix Dornaus is holding onto Ivory Coast notes trading at 38 percent of face value even as the world’s biggest cocoa producer slides closer to default on $2.3 billion of debt, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported. “I expect them to miss the deadline and technically they will go into default, but at the end of the day they will pay the debt,” said Dornaus, who helps manage about 1.4 billion euros ($1.9 billion) in emerging-market debt at Erste Sparinvest KAG in Vienna. The payment owed is “really peanuts for them, the money is there,” he said.

The clock is ticking for Ivory Coast to pay interest on a $2.3 billion bond and investors are sceptical the West African country, in the midst of a tense political stand-off, will avoid its second debt default in little over a decade, Reuters Africa reported. Ivory Coast owes nearly $30 million on the bond after failing to make a payment last week but has a 30-day grace period, until the end of January, before it would be declared in default. Meanwhile, its crisis looks to be deepening.