Côte d'Ivoire on Tuesday launched the construction of two new cocoa processing plants, of which it is the world's largest producer, in Abidjan and San Pedro, the major cocoa port in the south-west of the country, with Chinese funding.

President Alassane Ouattara, campaigning for his re-election to a controversial third term in the October 31 presidential election, laid the first stone of the Abidjan plant, which like that of San Pedro will have a capacity of 50,000 tons per year, according to the authorities.

The objective is to increase its share of added value in the cocoa sector for this West African country, which currently processes only a quarter, or 500,000 tonnes, of its annual production of around two million tons of cocoa beans, into cocoa paste for export and chocolate manufacturing.

The authorities' objective is therefore to increase this capacity to 600,000 tonnes, then to one million tonnes per year in the long term, according to Yves Koné, the general manager of the Conseil Café Cacao, the Ivorian public body which manages the sector and which will be the operator of the two plants, whose capital will be opened up to private capital at a later date.

Two storage warehouses with a combined capacity of 300,000 tons will also be built in the two ports, which export all Ivorian cocoa, as well as a training center for cocoa trades in the economic capital.

The construction of these infrastructures, by a Chinese company, should last two years. The total investment amounts to 216 billion CFA francs (330 million euros), financed by a loan from China, signed in April.

"40% of the production of the factories will be intended for the Chinese market", specified Mr. Koné.

Cocoa is strategic for Côte d'Ivoire, which is the world's largest producer, with 40% of the market. Brown gold represents 10% of Ivorian GDP and 40% of its export earnings. It supports five million people, or about a fifth of the Ivorian population, according to the World Bank .

Ivory Coast and Ghana, which together produce 70% of the world's cocoa, have been trying since last year to push up world prices. They introduced a new selling mechanism (called a "living income differential") to increase the selling price by $400 per ton to better remunerate their farmers.