Oil palm industry to get a Presidential “beating”
President Maithripala Sirisena has at the recent National Economic Council (NEC) meeting decided to ban the cultivation of oil palm in Sri Lanka. No official confirmation has been intimated yet.
Plantation Industries Minister Navin Dissanayake told the Business Times on Wednesday that the President had taken the decision to ban oil palm cultivation in the country. This decision was taken about two weeks back at the NEC meeting held at the President’s office.
This decision was taken “without looking at real hard evidence,” he noted adding that the last year’s budget had advocated the cultivation of 20,000 hectares of oil palm in the country.
Recent protests by a number of villages in various parts of the country had led to the disruption of cultivation in these areas as a result of which some of the crops were not planted.
This has caused losses to some of the Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs) that have invested in the cultivation of oil palm in the country, analysts said.
During the meeting, President Sirisena had informed the council that oil palm was not suitable for cultivation and that it should be banned.
He had made these observations based on a report submitted by the Central Environmental Authority (CEA) titled “A Study to Identify Environmental and Social Issues of Oil Palm Cultivation in Sri Lanka”.
This study undertaken by the CEA had recommended that the establishment of new plantations, expansion of existing plantations and re-plantation of oil palm should be discontinued in Sri Lanka.
Further it pointed out that the importation of viable oil palm seeds should be banned with immediate effect under the export and import control Act and other relevant regulation.
Moreover, the cultivation of viable oil palm seeds imported under the approval of the Plantation Ministry so far should be only allowed in areas identified over a strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) study.
Further it stated that district level monitoring should be carried out on already established oil palm plantations and noted that those cultivations already carried out on “fragile and environmentally unsuitable land areas” should be rehabilitated with suitable trees.
In addition precautions should be taken to stop the regeneration of the plant into other areas surrounding the plantations.
However, Plantation Industries Ministry Secretary J.A. Ranjith said that the decision of the President was yet to be officially intimated to them.
He pointed out that as a ministry they had wanted to implement the plants in the nurseries and in this regard they would be seeking another discussion.
Palm Oil Industry Association President Dr. Rohan Fernando told the Business Times on Friday that none of the stakeholders has been consulted in this regard and said it is an unfortunate event that such a ban should come into effect.
He explained that palm oil has been cultivated for over 50 years in Sri Lanka and pointed out that two countries – Malaysia and Indonesia – together grow the plant on 15 million hectares that have powered their economies.
Sri Lanka on the contrary has only planted under 10,000 hectares and at the moment the industry has over 500,000 plants in its nurseries for which the plantation companies have spent over Rs. 500 million.
All RPCs together have invested Rs. 15 billion on the industry for its mills and cultivation, Dr. Fernando said.
At present there are only two mills that process oil palm namely the palm oil processing factory managed by Watawala Plantations at Nakiyadeniya and AEN Palm Oil Processing which is a joint venture of Agalawtta Plantations PLC, Elpitiya Plantations PLC and Namunukula Plantations PLC with the factory located at Mohamaddi Estate in Baduraliya.