Blomberg and Fitch Solutions have said Ghana, in the next five years will become West Africa’s major exporter of palm oil.
According to the two institutions, Ghana will outpace Ivory Coast which is currently the region’s biggest exporter and foreign exchange earner of palm oil.
Palm oil production in Ghana is expected to grow averagely by 4.4 per cent year-on-year starting this year to 2025.
The sector’s potential to outperform that of Ivory Coast’s according to Bloomberg and Fitch, comes on the back of recent establishment of industry and government bodies to regulate and support the sector.
The support from government bodies, Bloomberg and Fitch notes, will further incentivize investments in the sector in the coming years.
Recent data indicates that Ivory Coast harvests around 2.3 million tons (Mt) of palm kernels, from which it produces more than 500,000 tons of crude palm oil. Ghana on the other hand, harvests around 2 million tons (Mt) of palm kernels annually.
But despite the projected growth of Ghana’s palm oil sector, palm oil production will fall below global demand as Africa’s combined palm oil production will still not make it a global supplier of palm oil in the coming years with the world’s top producers still being Indonesia and Malaysia.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Exports Promotion Authority (GEPA) together with the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI), are planning to boost production to have palm oil surplus which is estimated to earn the country some $134 million through experts in the next 10 years.
