According to Dr. Adama Coulibaly, the general manager of the Coton-Cashew Council, the regulatory body for the sector in Côte d'Ivoire, this is due "mainly to the decline in the purchasing power of traditional consumers such as Americans and Europeans". . This current market situation has had the direct consequence of a general decline in demand and export prices for cashew nuts from African producing countries. International prices to Côte d'Ivoire have fallen by around 30% due to the decline in the activities of Vietnamese and Indian manufacturers. He will share that this drop is related to the closure of 30% of industrial units in Vietnam, but this is largely compensated by the other factories that are in operation, in China, as well as in Africa. And to add, despite this situation, exports are on the rise in Côte d'Ivoire. At the domestic level, "this crisis has resulted in a slowdown in export marketing financing, which has led to a relative drop in the farm gate price from April 2023" at the level of the Ivorian campaign, a- he added. Despite field checks, farm gate prices, which had reached a level of 415 FCFA per kg at the start of the campaign, fell from April in some localities below the floor price set by the government, informed Dr. Adama Coulibaly. In addition, he will point out that “the quantities marketed by all producers at the beginning of April 2023, before the drop in prices, were 750,000 tonnes corresponding to 71% of our projected objectiveâ€. He will specify that "750,000 tons were purchased between the floor price of 315 Fcfa and 400 Fcfa, before prices began to fall". Faced with this, the Cotton-Cashew Council initiated on April 20, 2023, a purchase and regulation operation with minimum farm gate prices of 315 CFA francs. This operation, which is still in progress, aims to raise farm gate prices. Dr. Adama Coulibaly notes that the strategies adopted by the Council since the beginning of the campaign have made it possible to extract, from the hands of producers, about 1.150 million tonnes to date, or 100,000 tonnes more than the quantity planned. "We had planned 1.050 million tons of cashew nuts and we are at 1.150 million tons, but the campaign is not over yet," he continued. Of these quantities purchased from producers, 1.102 million tonnes were actually unloaded. In the port warehouses, "853,000 tonnes were unloaded and 249,000 tonnes in the processors' warehouses", he noted, commenting "that we can say that for a forecast of 300,000 tonnes for the year 2023 to be transformed locally , we are at 83% of this objectiveâ€. At the same period, in 2022, the quantities unloaded were 968,000 tonnes compared to 915,000 tonnes in 2021. If we compare the quantities unloaded in 2023 and those in 2022, there are 134,000 tonnes more for this campaign compared to 187,000 tonnes of more in 2021, he observed. Today, “we are at 593 tonnes of raw cashew nuts exported to the main traditional customers, Vietnam and India. This year, the ratio is 80% for Vietnam, 19% for India and 1% between Algeria, Malaysia,†he said. The Council estimates “to date, the quantities held by producers at around 100,000 tonnesâ€. For Dr. Coulibaly, "while it is true that the unfavorable economic situation has affected the domestic prices of raw nuts, the actual marketing figures strongly contradict all theories of poor sales of cashew nuts". Dr. Adama Coulibaly then indicated that 593,000 tons have been exported to date for the current 2023 campaign, against 455,315 tons in the same period the previous year, a positive gap 138,000 tons of cashew exported despite the crisis and declining consumption in traditional markets. The Director General of the Cotton-Cashew Council also denounced the "incivility" of certain actors who seek the products in neighboring countries, while calling on the producing countries on the continent to be "solidarity to avoid this situation". The 2023 campaign, in Côte d'Ivoire, opened on February 10, 2023 with a farm gate floor price of 315 FCFA/Kg. Production forecasts were 1.050 million tons of raw cashew nuts, including 300,000 tons for local processing units against 224,000 tons in 2022. On June 15, 2023, the Council opened an industrial zone dedicated to cashew in the north of the country. In the coming weeks, he plans to open two other industrial parks whose work is very advanced, in particular in Bondoukou (East) and Séguéla (North).