Monrovia – A one-day National Oil Palm Symposium has ended in Liberia at the Ministry of Agriculture PMU in Fendell outside Monrovia.
The National Oil Palm Symposium is a national event implemented by the Oil Palm Sector Technical Working Group (OPSTWG), a private sector initiative driven that is sanctioned and approved by the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Agriculture Coordination Committee (ACC) with the private-public partnership in which partners take voluntary actions, individually and in combination to identify challenges, document relevant information, identify responsible implementing agency and recommend possible solutions to policy makers and other actors in the Liberian Oil Palm Industry.
The Symposium brought together the government of Liberia represented by the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Forestry Development Authority, four Oil Palm Concessions, Independent Oil Palm Producers, one regional Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) representative, exporters, processing machine manufacturers and other value chain actors to discuss challenges that will lead to documented solutions to match implementing partners and further recommend to policy makers with implementing timelines that will be reported and vetted for follow-up Symposium at the end of the first quarter in 2017.
The Oil Palm Sector Technical Working Group Administrative Head Chars Brown said, the National Symposium is being funded by the Deutsche Government through the international group Solidaridad that partnerships with others, collaborate with industries and supports Countries in the Oil Palm industries around the world.
Brown praised the Solidaridad for all of the assistance and resources it continues to make towards the development and sustainability of the industry and encouraged the stake-holders to remain steadfast in making sure that the industry remains vibrant.
The Country Director Macarthur Paybaye admonished the Ministry of Agriculture to always do right in making the Agriculture sector in Liberia what it’s supposed be. He said that the marching order is what the Ministry is to follow and all that we have agreed on here today must be placed in the program framework that the Ministry has developed.
Macarthur furthered that the programs we develop must feed into theLiberia Agriculture Transformation Agenda, LATA as it is difficult to stay abroad and develop a program that can fit in the agenda here without being knowledgeable of what the Ministry already has here.
The Solidaridad boss indicated that the problems affecting the farmers and all stakeholders in the Oil Palm industry are not all known to the Ministry of Agriculture and it is going to be difficult to handle by itself.
He affirmed that if there is money available, his institution shall support another Symposium or meeting for Oil Palm and also Cocoa in helping identify those problems and finding solutions in the various Agriculture Industries in the Country.
The Solidaridad intervention is new in the Liberia Oil Palm Industry but very visible in Ghana, Ivory Coast and other Countries in Africa and the world.