By Emmanuel Nduka
The Nigerian Government has announced that efforts are in the pipeline for possible collaboration with the Indonesia Government in exploring export-driven strategies to enhance economic growth and development in palm oil.
Nigeria’s Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Aliyu Abdullahi, gave the assurance in a meeting with Pahala Mansury, Vice-President, Foreign Affairs, Indonesia, on Tuesday in Abuja, the Nigerian capital.
Identifying palm oil as having huge potentials of export, he said the “growth strategy of Nigeria recognises that as much as we will be talking about import substitution, the best solution is for us to have export driven strategies. We can accommodate investors so that we can take the oil palm to the next level of economic growth and development”.
“l believe giving what you have done by lifting 16million farmers out of poverty and with the existing oil palm in Nigeria we can achieve that and we can do it. Considering Nigeria ecosystem, we have more numbers to take out of poverty; we are developing a nucleus to make it possible; hence we are going to work to see how to turn it around,” the minister added.
Mansury said the visit was for both countries to see how they could be able to develop a much better economic cooperation particularly in area of agriculture.
He identified Nigeria as Indonesia’s most significant economic partner in sub-Sahara Africa in terms of trade, investment and economic cooperation, adding that through palm oil production, Indonesia was able to lift over 16million of smallholder farmers out of poverty.
“Right now, Indonesia is the largest producer of palm oil producing approximately 50 million metric tons. Domestically we are using about 10 million metric tons to 12 million metric tons while we are exporting the remaining 38 million metric tons,” Mansury explained.
He noted that Indonesia was actually one of the largest exporter of edible palm to Nigeria, pharmaceutical among others while Nigeria was the biggest exporter of fertiliser and others to Indonesia.
“We hope to discuss further on how we are going to develop a better cooperation in agriculture for food security for both Indonesia and Nigeria, provision of grant and capacity building,” Mansury added.
He identified other areas both countries could further enhance their cooperation as energy security, adding thag both countries have started economic cooperation already within the health sector particularly in the area of livestock vaccines.
The Indonesian scribe said the meeting was also to seek the participation of Nigerians farmers in the second Indonesia and Africa forum scheduled for September and membership of Nigeria in Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries (CPOPC).
“Through the forum will develop a much stronger economic cooperation between Indonesia and Africa, facilitate meetings of both countries, private sector and encourage private sector investment in Nigeria in research cooperation among others,” he said.
