DAVAO CITY (PNA) – Palm oil growers in Mindanao are optimistic that the production would continue to increase in Mindanao even as the country is still importing oil palm products from nearby Southeast Asian countries.

In a meeting recently held at the Davao del Norte Capitol in Tagum City, C.K. Chang, president of Philippine Palm Oil Development Council, Inc. (PPODCI), said that 10 years ago, the country has only some 20,000 hectares of oil palm trees, but at present, it has already 45,000 hectares of it mostly found in Mindanao.

“But we are still importing oil palm products from Malaysia and Indonesia,” he said.

Chang cited wide-ranging uses of the plant in food industry.

“Palm oil is an ingredient in products like coffee creamer, and instant noodles, among many others,” he said.

Chang said the increase in oil palm production in Mindanao is expected, as the growing population would continue to appreciate oil palm products and consume more of it.

He said organizing of growers as cooperatives and the accessing of financing from the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) are the current production thrusts in the opening and expansion of hectarage of oil palm.

Chang said in the statistics of PPODCI, a non-government organization (NGO) organized by mostly growers in Mindanao, the island has over 35,000 hectares devoted to oil palm trees, while Palawan and Bohol have only 6,500 and 3,500 hectares, respectively.

Bembot Espanola, director of PPODCI and palm oil grower of Compostela Valley, urged local government authorities to extend support to the oil palm industry even as he described the general lack of support of the national government.

He said the industry has been placed under the care of the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA), which allegedly “has no budget to nurture our undertaking.”

“If only all local government units would replicate what the North Cotabato provincial government has been doing in its plant-now-pay-later program, the oil palm industry would be given a good boost right from the ground,” Espanola pointed out.

He said individual oil palm growers have an average of three hectares of oil palm farms.

At a P5,000 income per hectare, he grosses P15,000 per month, enough to meet the basic needs of his family.