Cocoa beans and processed cocoa products represent over 40% of Côte d’Ivoire’s merchandise export earnings and serve as a primary source of fiscal revenue through export tariffs and corporate taxes on multinational agribusinesses. A sustained structural shift in global consumer preferences towards low-sugar alternatives, combined with significant agricultural oversupply from emerging producers, has resulted in a prolonged, low world market price for cocoa.
Explain how a sustained low world market price for cocoa would be likely to affect the economic development of a less economically developed cocoa-dependent economy such as Côte d’Ivoire or Ghana.
