Gov't targets 450,000 tons of palm oil by 2020

In order to fulfil the ambition of the Cameroonian government to reach a local production level of 450,000 tons in palm oil by 2020, a mission gathering senior officers from the Ministry of Agriculture and the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), a public agro-industrial unit operating oil palm groves in the South-West region, recently visited Malaysia, we learned from official sources.

According to our information, the Cameroonian delegation went to get inspiration from this country’s experience in terms of palm oil production, where annual farm yields peak often peak at 22 million tons, against barely 300,000 tons for Cameroon.

The Malaysian performances, we learn, are the result of the use of cutting-edge technologies in the farms; the use of very high yield seedlings; very intense involvement of populations in the production of palm oil, particularly with small producers operating on average on 15-hectare farms (against 5 hectares in Cameroon), etc. So many Malaysian realities which are still dreams for Cameroon.

As a reminder, despite the existence of large industrial units which operate with oil palms (60,000 hectares in total for 60% of the production of palm oil) in the country, and several private plantations (10,000 hectares representing 40% of the local production of palm oil) with traditional oil factories, Cameroon is only able to produce between 235,000 and 270,000 tons of palm oil per year. The national demand officially stands at approximately 385,000 tons. Which corresponds to a production deficit of over 100,000 tons every year.