Indonesia to expand palm growing area

Indonesia aims to replant 540,000 ha of smallholder palm plantation by 2024 (Photo: ukragroconsult.com)

Jakarta (VNA) - Indonesia aims to accelerate its oil palm replanting programme to double the area it covered between 2017 and 2022 in an effort to maintain production, according to a government official.

The world’s biggest palm oil producer launched a subsidised palm replanting programme for smallholders in 2017 to boost output without clearing more forested land and to help fend off attacks on the sustainability of the crop.

According to Rizal Affandi Lukman, an official at the Coordinating Ministry of Economic Affairs, Indonesia will replant 540,000 hectares of smallholder palm plantation by 2024. In less than two years, the country has to work hard to achieve the smallholder replanting target to rejuvenate the palm plantation and maintain production.

At the programme’s launch in late 2017, Indonesia had initially aimed to replant 2.4 million hectares by 2025. However, as of last February, only around 278,000 hectares of the land had been replanted.

This year, the government has set a target to replant 180,000 hectares.

Rizal noted that the programme needs financial support from banks as the government has only allocated 30 million IDR (2,200 USD) subsidy per hectare./.