ABIDJAN, March 28 (Reuters) - Cocoa arrivals in top grower Ivory Coast were grinding to a halt from the week from March 14 to March 20, with just 17 tonnes reaching its two at ports in that period, compared with 8,525 tonnes in the same week of the previous season.
Only 3,393 beans were declared by exporters at the ports of Abidjan and San Pedro for that week, which brought the total arrivals to 1,040,591 tonnes by March 20, according to data from the Coffee and Cocoa Bourse (BCC) seen by Reuters on Monday.
Ivory Coast's Coffee and Cocoa Management Committee told exporters last week they were forbidden to buy any more cocoa, a follow up to a decree from incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo putting the whole industry in state hands in an attempt to break sanctions on it.
"We didn't have a choice. With this situation we have had to stop buying cocoa since last week because the Management Committee told us to," said an exporter from an Abidjan-based export house.
"From now on, we are not the ones who buy Ivory Coast's cocoa. We've shut down and let go our personnel."
Western sanctions on bodies that support Gbagbo, who is refusing to step down after an election U.N.-certified results show he lost, have stopped the cocoa sector dead in its tracks.
Few ships are coming to the ports and European companies are forbidden to have dealings with the cocoa management body.
Alassane Ouattara, Gbagbo's rival and the internationally recognized president, has slapped a ban on cocoa exports.
The Ouattara ban, EU sanctions and the collapse of the local banking system have meant over 450,000 tonnes of stocks are languishing in storage, and concerns about a deterioration in quality are growing by the day.
Cocoa exporters cannot export and have refused to pay tax, prompting Gbabgo to nationalise the industry. The management body is threatening to seize cocoa from exporters in lieu of tax -- opening up a potentially massive stock grab.
"We shut our warehouse and factory down at the end of last week," said the director of a San Pedro-based export company.
"We can't buy, we can't export. All our employees have been let go. Even me, I'm now unemployed."
Yet Ivory Coast is having a bumper cocoa season -- and the timing could not be worse. Arrivals to ports were estimated at over 1 million tonnes by the end of last week, over 100,000 tonnes up on the same point of last year.----
