East Sepik can make K20bil a year for PNG, says Bird

EAST Sepik can contribute K20 billion a year to the country’s gross domestic product from agriculture, says Governor Allan Bird.
He told the FM100 Talkback show yesterday that currently, the province probably contributes K700 to K800 million “and it is not a lot”.
“If we did a lot of rice. We have got oil palm coming up. If you add that altogether, East Sepik could be contributing more than K20 billion yearly to Papua New Guinea’s GDP.” Bird said. “And not only will we contribute that much for 30 to 40 years but for generations and hundreds of years to come.
“Right now in cocoa, PNG is doing like 40,000 tonnes a year and someone is trying to put in a chocolate factory, why would someone do that when you need at least a 100,000 tonnes a year.
“And the same thing could be said for rice, coffee and everything else.
“We need to get the volumes up. It is the volume that gives you the economy of scale that then justifies you putting in the additional investment to go down to the downstream processing angle.
“If you don’t, then you can do what they call, your niche market-type arrangements where you can get small processing targeted at a high-value markets because your costs just goes up when you do not have the volume.”
Bird said the potential for cocoa in the province is huge.
“I visited a chocolate factory in Fiji and they only process like 500 kilos a year and it was really a small operation and you can do things like that quite easily.”
He said the East Sepik government has passed an agriculture commodity bill which would allow for the control of agricultural produce and the setting of quality standards.
“I think East Sepik can produce up to 100,000 tonnes and that would be worth between K800 million to a billion kina a year.”