District to continue price subsidy for cash crops: MP

THE Sumkar administration will continue to help cash crop farmers by subsidising prices through copra and cocoa buyers as well as other crops, Sumkar MP Chris Nangoi says.
His comments follow complaints by farmers on social media that he was only focusing on subsidising the price of copra on Karkar Island and not on the Sumgilbar local level government (LLG) on mainland Madang.
“Sumgilbar is part of Sumkar and as the mandated leader, I will focus on both LLGs in the district in terms of service delivery and my people must not be misled that I am focusing on Karkar LLG alone,” he said in a statement.
“The reason why we have put in the first component of funds to subsidise copra prices through buyers on the island is that Karkar Island depends mainly on copra as the source of income.”
Nangoi said that did not mean the focus was only on Karkar.
“We also have plans to subsidise copra, cocoa and other cash crops prices on the mainland too,” he said.
“As for Bagabag Island, which is in the Karkar LLG, instead of bringing their copra to the factories in town to be bought for K1.20 per kilo, they can just bring it across to the designated buyers on Karkar where their copra can fetch K2 for every kilo.
“With the recent drop of copra commodity price on the market, the Sumkar DDA has allocated K200,000 each to the three copra buyers on the Island – Biabi Enterprise, Kulili Estate and Linguan Company Ltd.”
Linguan Company Ltd is currently buying copra from locals for K2 per kilo while that other two are paying K1.80 for a kilo.