Review will help Opic move beyond ‘extension services’

OIL Palm Industry Corporation (Opic) acting general secretary Kepson Puputa says Opic only provides extension services to the five project areas in the country, when planting is now happening in other areas as well.
Pupita said in Port Moresby on Friday during the stakeholders consultation of the Opic Act (1992) review that places like East New Britain, East and West Sepik, Central, Morobe and Madang provinces were now growing oil palm.
Opic’s projects are Hoskins and Bialla (West New Britain), Popondetta (Northern), Alotau (Milne Bay) and Kavieng (New Ireland).
He said a review of the act was now important.
“Since 1992, we have had an act called Oil Palm Industry Corporation which gives rise to the office I’m in,” Pupita said.
He said Opic provided extension services to those areas but other than that “we do nothing, a lot of times, when we have issues unfolding in the country with regards to oil palm”.
“We have issues in East New Britain, in East Sepik, in areas where new oil palm development is taking place (but) I do not have the information,” he said.
He added that these were legacy issues.
“We have issues on the process formula, a price formula that I try to find out who approved that, in every business transaction, you have a willing buyer and a willing seller.
“There are many more (issues) like research and development, it is a government function in any country.
“In PNG, the government does not know how the research and development is going.”
He said there needed to be an institution that would have oversight on the oil palm industry.
“The issues are many and we need an institution that needs to have oversight, not necessarily regulating the industry, but a strong oversight of the industry.
“We cannot compare oil palm with the other commodity boards (like) coffee, cocoa, coconut, this industry is not the same as those others.
“It is an industry that is sustainable.
“We cannot say oil palm cannot be grown in other areas of PNG, we know oil palm will grow, we need to do a little bit of research and development and we will find out, we can grow up to six million, seven million hectares in this country.
“Malaysia has got 5.6 million hectares of planted oil palm.
“In PNG we have government mandated projects covering only 200,000 hectares of planted oil palm.”
He said this had been the case for the last 50 years because the thinking was that PNG could not do it.