During a workshop for discussions with the financial sector on financing the marketing of cashew nuts held this Tuesday, December 12, 2023 in Plateau, the general director of the cotton and cashew nut council Adama Coulibaly invited financiers to support the cashew sector, because "it is a sector of the future, an ecological and economic sector". According to Mr. Adama Coulibaly, Côte d'Ivoire has become, in recent years, a major player in global transformation, the 3rd processor after Vietnam and India. The level of processing increased from 6% of national production in 2013 with 31,220 tonnes of raw nuts processed to 22% in 2022 with 224,036 tonnes processed. However, he will say, the consolidation and improvement of these results, at the level of the cashew sector with the financing of marketing operations by the national financial sector, control of the marketing chain, quality and increase of added value through the continued development of processing, are today the major challenges facing the Cotton and Cashew Council in the implementation of the reform adopted in 2013 by the Government. The objective of this workshop is to inform the Ivorian financial sector on the cashew marketing plan and the security measures put in place for the monitoring and control of activities to define the first person responsible for cotton and cashew. cashew. Continuing, Mr. Coulibaly indicated that Côte d'Ivoire's ambition is transformation revealing that "this year, 262,000 tonnes were transformed against 57,000 tonnes in 2019, 103,000 tonnes in 2020, 136,000 tonnes in 2021 and 224,000 tonnes in 2022". Also, Dr Adama Coulibaly explained to players in the banking and financial sector that the sector has set up traceability mechanisms. “Today, any buyer who must work with trackers must have a tracker card to operate at the field edge. We have between 120 and 140 approved exporters,†he maintained before adding that each year, we have between 1,000 and 1,300 buyers who are approved and we have around 15,000 trackers who receive tracker cards. Speaking, Daniel Béké, representing the president of the Association of Banking and Financial Institutions Professionals of Côte d'Ivoire (APBEF-CI), said that in 10 years the sector has gone from 15 to 31 banks and financial institutions. “We went from a total balance sheet which was around 10,000 billion CFA francs to a little more than 20,000 billion CFA francs, which means that the banks have doubled their size, giving more chance to all the players to capture the credit,†mentioned Daniel Béké. He also noted that banks are interested in several sectors including the cashew sector where it finances exporters and processors in particular.