Cocoa farmers to benefit from K9.3mil road project

COCOA farmers in East New Britain (ENB) will have better access to markets with the resealing road maintenance project set to begin on 26km of the New Britain Highway from Kokopo to Bitagunan next year.
This follows a K9.3 million contract awarded and supported by the PNG-Australia partnership road maintenance programme.
In a statement by the Australian High Commission, connecting farmers to markets has been a key focus for the partnership road maintenance programme, which is delivered through the Department of Works.
It highlighted that communities in Gazelle were reporting an annual increase in cocoa production, bringing new and exciting opportunities to farmers in the area and drawing attention to the importance of road maintenance projects for market access across the country.
Moveh Apelis, who had farmed cocoa in East New Britain for the last 45 years, and formally engaged in the cocoa industry in a number of government-funded programmes, non-governmental organisations and the private sector, said there had been an increase in the last five years.
He was now supporting 1,000 local cocoa growers as the lead farmer with the productive partnerships in agriculture project which he said was helping in the increase in production.
“At Kerevat alone, in 2016, Agmark recorded 6,000 bags of cocoa,” Apelis said.
“In 2017, it jumped to 9,000 bags and from 2018 it jumped up to 20,000 bags,” Moveh said.
He estimated that in 2019 and 2020, the cocoa production in Kerevat had jumped from 20,000 bags to 30,000 or 40,000 bags, translating to 2,500 tonnes.
“With increasing production, improving access to markets is essential, ” he said.
“If farmers are travelling on good roads, it should reduce the cost of transportation and support us to get a cleaner product to the market.”