Maximum production of palm oil eyed by 2023

August 24, 2014

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Butuan City – Via 384,000 hectares of palm oil plantations, the Caraga region will contribute even more to the country’s vegetable oil industry by the year 2023.
Foreign and domestic business groups and farmers are eyeing for wider areas to plant their crop, as the market continues to be a viable one, internationally and locally.
This development was revealed during the 2014 Mid-Year Media and Civil Society Organization briefing at the DTI Regional Conference here last week.
Aside from the DTI, officials of the Caraga Palm Oil Development Council, Palm Oil Development Council General Assembly, Philippine Palm Oil Development Council, Agusan del Sur Palm Oil Growers, Filipinas Palm Oil Mill, Uraya Farms Bunawan Agusan del Sur and Agumil Phil. Inc. are working together to attain this objective.
Before the 2015 ASEAN Economic Integration, the Caraga Palm Oil Development Council passed two resolutions for the bid to host the 2015 Palm Oil Congress here, aiming to construct more strategies that will bring in more participation of farmers and palm oil growers to meet the target.
To date, only 20,040 hectares are devoted to palm oil tree plantations in the Caraga region.
“We have the capacity to offer more because of our wide lands in various open areas in the region,” said Director Pagaran.
The region’s top DTI official cited the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) which has some 400,000 hectares available, the co-management scheme which has 100,000 hectares, Community-Based Forest Management Agreement (CFMA) and Integrated Industrial Forest Agreement (IFMA) which have 100,000 hectares, and the expired Paper Corporation of the Philippines (PICOP) that has 120,000 hectares.
“These are big areas and it’s up to our farmers and various business groups to utilize these big lands for much more production,” stressed Director Pagaran. “We need to plant more or otherwise, based on our cluster data, we will import 1,000,0000 metric tons of palm oil with a value of P54.50 billion by year 2017,” he said. (Mike U. Crismundo)