A MYANMAR company is planning a massive expansion at its cocoa plantations.

Jean-Yves Branchard, director of the Ananda Company, said it is growing cocoa beans for export on a 200-acre farm in northern Kayin State.

He said he hoped the first harvest will be early next year, but the company is also planning to expand the growing area to 1000 acres.

“We are going to prepare the land for the new plantation before the dry season starts in March,” Mr Branchard said.

He said Myanmar is the best place in Asia to grow cocoa and believes his company is the only one in Myanmar growing cocoa beans.

Cocoa is a very sensitive plant to grow, he said, adding that it needs more care than coffee. Recently in Malaysia, many cocoa plantations were damaged by insects.

More than 3.6 million tonnes of cocoa beans were grown worldwide in 2004.
This is more than double the amount grown in 1974, when about 1.56 million tonnes were produced.

The world’s top cocoa producing countries are the West African nations of Ivory Coast (1.33 million tonnes) and Ghana (0.74 million tonnes), followed by Indonesia (0.43 million tonnes), Nigeria, Brazil, Cambodia and Ecuador.

The Netherlands is the leading cocoa processing country, followed by the United States.

Prices for cocoa reached a five-year high in November 2004 because exports from the Ivory Coast were predicted to decrease due to escalating violence in the region.