While world’s biggest chocolate companies see their profits soar, they fail to keep their promises to improve the wages of the farmers who grow cocoa in Ghana, one of the main producing countries, NGO Oxfam denounced in a report.

In a report published Thursday (May 11) Oxfam said earnings for US companies Hershey, Mars and Mondelez in addition to Italy’s Ferrero and Swiss peers Lindt & Spruengli and Nestle had increased since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, a period when inflation has skyrocketed.

The world’s four largest public chocolate corporations [Editor’s Note: Hershey, Lindt, Mondelēz and Nestlé] together made nearly $15 billion in profits from their confectionary divisions alone since the pandemic broke. THis amount was up by an average 16 percent since 2020.

The giants paid out on average more than their total net profits (113 percent) to shareholders between 2020 and 2022.