Ministry of Trade: Cocoa Bean Reference Price Plummets 29 Per Cent

Jakarta – The Ministry of Trade has attributed the sharp decline in the reference price for cocoa beans to weakening demand that has not been balanced by increased supply.

Speaking in Jakarta on Saturday, Tommy Andana, Director-General of Foreign Trade at the Ministry of Trade, announced that the reference price for cocoa beans in March 2026 has been set at USD 4,047.45 per metric tonne, representing a steep fall of 29.21 per cent or USD 1,669.99 per metric tonne compared to the previous period.

The decline in the cocoa bean reference price has resulted in a corresponding fall in the export reference price for cocoa beans in March 2026 to USD 3,722 per metric tonne, a decrease of 30.44 per cent or USD 1,628 from the previous period.

“The decline in reference prices and export reference prices for cocoa beans has been driven by falling demand that has not been matched by increased supply as production improves in major producing countries such as Côte d’Ivoire,” said Andana.

The export levy on cocoa beans for this period, as set out in Appendix C of Ministry of Finance Regulation Number 69 of 2025, remains at 7.5 per cent.

For leather products, the export reference price in March 2026 remains unchanged from the previous month. Meanwhile, the export reference price for pine resin in March 2026 has been set at USD 903 per metric tonne, an increase of USD 42 or 4.88 per cent from February 2026.

The export reference prices for leather products; sawn wood or wood chips and particles, chipwood, and processed wood with a cross-section of 1,000–4,000 millimetres from other assortments of plantation forest timber from sungkai species; and processed wood specifically of merbau species with a cross-section of 4,000–10,000 millimetres remain unchanged from February 2026.

By contrast, the export reference price for processed wood of merbau species with a cross-section of 4,000–10,000 millimetres from teak species has declined.