Gvt to incentivise cooking oil production

GOVERNMENT plans to incentivise the cooking oil value chain starting from next year in an effort to ensure the country has enough raw materials, including crude oil reserves.

BESIDES the fact that the country will have enough crude oil, it will also cut the import bill by US$120 million spent yearly on crude oil imports. Soya beans, sunflower and cotton small scale farmers will get five percent incentives to stimulate crude oil production.

Industry and Commerce Minister Mike Bimha told The Sunday Mail Business that the country has long and short term plans for the cooking oil sub sector.

He said in the short term, Government will make sure that oil producers will receive enough foreign currency allocation to ensure adequate cooking oil supplies in the country.

“We have long and short term plans for the oil expressers’ subsector. Short term plans are that we are going to make foreign currency available to the oil producers to ensure enough supplies on the shelves.

“We are going to extend bonus incentives to all small scale farmers of soya beans and sunflower to boost production in the crude oil sector. We will do the same thing we did to tobacco and cotton to encourage our small farmers to produce more.

“In the near future, we want to be exporters of crude oil and eventually cooking oil to generate more foreign currency for the country instead of pumping it out like we are doing right now,” said Minister Bimha.

In the recent panic buying experienced last week, many people hoarded cooking oil, resulting in some shortages and price hikes of the commodity across the country.

Cooking oil prices for a 2 litre bottle sky-rocketed to $7 from as low as $2, 89 but the price has since gone down to just above $3. The price hikes were said to be a result of social media abuse.

Minister Bimha said: “There was unanimity of who triggered that information on the various social media platforms.

“The authorities will continue to ensure that the foreign currency allocations are made available to our local oil producers to make sure we have adequate stocks on our shelves.”

Most of the retailers who hiked prices from Saturday up to Monday found it difficult to continue with their prices from Tuesday going forward due to the subdued demand caused by aggressive forward buying at the weekend. Government is mobilising $150 million for the Command Soya bean scheme during the 2016-17 agricultural season.

Sakunda will work with CBZ, Ecobank and Barclays banks to provide the $48 million funding for soya bean production under the scheme.

Oil producers are also mobilising $100 million worth of inputs and irrigation infrastructure to grow 100 000 hectares of soya bean in the next summer season.

The facility will contract farmers to grow 150 000 tonnes required by the cooking oil manufacturers annually.