Gov’t urged to commercialize oil palm industry

President of the Artisanal Palm Oil Millers and Out-growers Association of Ghana, Paul Kwabena-Amaning has called on government to commercialize the production of oil palm to boost Ghana's economy.

Kwabena-Amaning says the palm oil sector is performing very well and is on the path of achieving self-sufficiency in massive palm oil production by 2021 and 2023 respectively.

He attributed the high level of progress in the production of the oil palm in the country to increased demand by farmers which is a result of the government’s subsidy on the inputs.

“We need to advance and build the palm oil sector to a larger capacity. When we see our own gari packaged and being sold by a Chinese, we chase it and are proud of it but what have we done to improve upon what we also have?”

He argues Malaysia learnt of oil palm from Ghana and now, “they are doing better than us and it gets to a point where we even import from them when we have the capacity to produce,” Paul-Kwabena-Amaning exclusively told Reynold Agyemang on ‘Pae Mu Ka’ on Accra-based Kingdom FM 107.7

Paul believes the land tenure system which works perfectly in Malaysia helps them to grow palm trees on a large scale and process the fruits into quality oil.

“But the same cannot be said for Ghana. Our land tenure system does not support farming on a large scale. Farmers can be given palm seedlings to plant but they do not get the land in their own communities to start a plantation”.

Paul Kwabena-Amaning further stated that the commercialization of oil palm will boost the country’s economy and reduce unemployment rate.