The cultivation of oil palm in the country will be brought to a halt completely while giving assistance to grow coconut in new areas, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said in his address to the newly elected parliament on Thursday. The cultivation of the crop had come under severe criticism from eco activists due to its alleged adverse impacts on the environment.
However, the plantation industry notes that the industry needs a clear and consistent policy direction to develop the perennial and lucrative industry which has to incur colossal losses due to short sighted and hoc policy measures in the past, said plantation company officials and industry experts. Planters’ Association of Ceylon Past Chairman and Managing Director, Hayleys Plantations, Dr. Roshan Rajadurai said had there been a clear stance and direction with regard to the cultivation of oil palm that have been in nurseries for a considerable time, the industry would not have to suffer such a major loss which could have been used for the growth of the other crops.
Plantation companies will sustain a cumulative loss of over Rs. 500 million within months due to policy inconsistencies and vacillation by the authorities on a well-regulated expansion of Sri Lanka’s oil palm cultivation, the sector’s apex industry association said. The Palm Oil Industry Association (POIA) said 356,000 oil palm plants imported on the strength of an earlier government decision to expand cultivation have been maturing in nurseries for over three years, due to the failure of the authorities to address concerns arising from falsehoods and disinformation spread by misled activists and lobbyists with vested interests. “About 40 percent of these trees may already be nonviable and we fear that the entire stock may have to be destroyed within the next two months, unless the government resolves this matter expeditiously,” POIA President Dr. Rohan Fernando said.
The Palm Oil Industry Association represents cultivators as well as refiners, processors, manufacturers, marketeers and sellers of palm oil and other products of the oil palm, who have cumulatively invested Rs. 26 billion in the industry. Sri Lanka has less than 11,000 hectares under oil palm – over 1 percent of the extents under tea, rubber and coconut – and plantation companies had been mandated to increase the total area under oil palm to 20,000 hectares under strictly-enforced guidelines that ensure the industry is environmentally non-invasive, before the government back-pedalled on the plan.
Dr. Fernando said the industry’s appeal to the government for permission to plant whatever viable trees are left in the nurseries, would enable the plantation companies to reduce the losses they are faced with and help increase local production of palm oil at a time when imports are being restricted to conserve foreign exchange. He said even if the entire stock of trees had been planted, the country’s extent under oil palm would only have increased by about 2,750 hectares. “There is also concern that coconut oil production is more costly and needs more land than oil palm.” He said that baseless vilification of the local palm oil industry had resulted in the country producing a mere 23,000 tonnes of palm oil per annum and the import of a staggering 220,000 tonnes of crude palm oil each year, at a cost of approximately Rs. 22 billion.
An earlier Government decision to encourage cultivation of oil palm and to increase the country’s extent under the crop to 20,000 hectares was backed by comprehensive conditions and guidelines, Dr. Fernando said.
However, lobbyists had used the haphazard, unregulated and rapacious early expansion of oil palm cultivation in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia to create a baseless fear psychosis about the industry, disregarding the fact that Sri Lanka has cultivated less than 11,000 hectares in 50 years.