In an effort to create more awareness on planting and processing and production of palm oil as cash crop to ensure sufficiency and export, the Anambra State office, Nigerian Export Promotion Council, NEPC, has held a sensitization workshop for stakeholders.
The Commissioner for Agriculture Anambra State, Dr. Forster Ihejiofor said that the state government is making sustained efforts to end poverty through agriculture with the distribution of oil palm and coconut seedlings and targeting households for them to tap into the large market of oil palm most especially.
Dr. Ihejiofor commended the Nigerian Export Promotion Council for the important workshop aimed at enlightening Ndi Anambra on the opportunities inherent in the palm oil production and business for them to fully tap on it.
In an opening remark, the State Coordinator, NEPC, Mr. Ndubueze Okeke noted that the workshop seeks to develop capacity in helping producers, would-be exporters and already existing exporters to be fully aware of the potential and new improvements in palm oil production and business for them to maximize the opportunity.
Mr. Okeke emphasized that before the discovery of Nigerian’s main export product; crude oil in the sixties, currently bedeviled by different challenges, palm oil was one of the main stay of the country’s economy, stressing that the time to increase non-crude oil revenue is now.
He harped that the global market for palm oil is currently over sixty-seven Billion Dollars as at 2022 noting that there must be renewed efforts by stakeholders to tap into the opportunities.
In a lecture, a resource person, Dr. Okey Ejikeme, who speaks on the topic “Palm Oil Production: Prospects and Challenges” revealed that Nigeria was producing forty six percent of world requirements in the sixties but currently produces only seven percent of world requirements, with Malaysia and Indonesia as world top producers.
Dr. Ejikeme explained that the opportunities in palm oil business are vast, noting that oil palm aviation fuel was first used in the South East during the civil war which he said is a good alternative to the now increasing jet fuel.
He pointed out that only twenty-six states can grow palm oil in the country and seventeen in large quantities, with Akwa Ibom, Rivers State, Imo, Ondo, Edo States, being top producers and Anambra State ninth on the table.
A participant, Mr. Ugochukwu Anigbogu noted that with the knowledge gained, he is better positioned to make good investment knowing the challenges and prospects even as he identified problems of land unavailability occasioned by the land use act, lack of loan facilities amongst others as the problems of oil palm production.
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