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Cocoa arrivals at
ports in top grower Cote d’Ivoire have inched ahead of last year
despite a political crisis threatening to tip the country back into
civil war, exporters said on Monday.

Some 577,000 tonnes
of beans made it from the farms to port by December 26 since the start
of the season in October, up from 565,122 tonnes last year, according
to a consensus estimate by exporters, who count truckloads arriving to
the docks.

“It is true that
the country is facing political difficulty, but we are trying to do
what we can. The cocoa has been available in large quantities for a
while now and our objective is to export it the best we can,” said an
official at an export company in San Pedro.

Cote d’Ivoire has
been in turmoil since a November 28 election in which both incumbent
Laurent Gbagbo and his rival Alassane Ouattara claimed victory,
sparking a violent standoff the U.N. says has killed more than 170
people.

Fears of a disruption to supplies have raised cocoa futures to four-month highs in recent weeks.

An exporter in
Abidjan said that the post-election turmoil has led some buyers to
stockpile beans, allowing them to catch up on sales when things calmed
down, but leading to some quality problems when they are finally
shipped to the port.

“The beans are
stockpiled for too long in the countryside in poor conditions leading
to an increase in moisture and humidity,” he said.

Exporters estimated
around 70,000 tonnes of beans were delivered to the West African
state’s two ports between December 20 and December 26, up from around
32,000 tonnes in the same week last year.