Busua (W/R), Oct.11, GNA- Mr. Alan Kyeremanteng, Minister of Trade and Presidential Special Initiative (PSI) said on Friday that, by opting to undertake the Oil Palm initiative, the Government aims at the development of corporate village enterprises that would bring employment and wealth to farming communities.

He said roads and necessary utilities to support the installation of a modern oil palm processing factory and to move goods and services to farmers and processors would soon be put in place.

The Minister was speaking at a ceremony at which 12 private sector oil palm nursery operators who have been contracted to raise high yielding oil palm seedlings to boost the sector, signed a performance contract with the PSI and the Oil Palm Research Institute at Busua in the Ahanta West District.

It is envisaged that the operators, selected from the Western, Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, Eastern and Central regions and are already in oil palm cultivation and palm oil milling, would produce enough seedlings for about 10,000 hectares expected to be cultivated per a year for the next five years.

The operators were presented with cheques for a total of 5.2 billion cedis to support the nursery project. They were given 4.5 billion cedis in July this year for the same purpose.

"One of the lessons we have learnt is that we should not be content to sell primary commodities", Mr. Kyeremanteng said, adding that, the country should use such commodities to develop new businesses, focussing on products that the world market wants, and develop technologies to make them competitive.

He emphasised the government's commitment to encourage local entrepreneurs to get support from the banks "to dream big" and establish World Class businesses and said, market opportunities exist for the country to cultivate additional 300,000 hectares of oil palm over the next five to ten years.

It is estimated that 2,000 new jobs could be created in the engineering sub-sector alone for industry to support the PSI, and there are many foreign investors waiting to put resources into the Initiative, the Minister said.

Mr Kyeremanteng advised the district assemblies and chiefs to coordinate their efforts to identify requisite lands for the development of plantations and decide on the ownership structure of the project. Ms Sophia Horner-Sam, Deputy Western Regional Minister said that many chiefs in the region have embraced the PSI on oil palm and have earmarked thousands of hectares of land banks for the project.

She hoped the contractors would work hard to meet the seedling requirements set for the project and said the regional coordinating council would do everything possible to ensure that the project succeed. Mr. Kwasi Poku, Coordinator of the PSI on oil palm said a total of 10.3 billion cedis would go into the nursery project this year and will have a credit line of 15 million dollars a year for the next five years.

Mr. Kwesi Biney, District Chief Executive for Ahanta West called on the government to expedite action to compensate owners of lands acquired by the First Republic for public projects but were later divested to private companies.

He said such lands were released with the understanding that projects were for the public and therefore did not demand any compensation and now that they belong to individual private companies, compensations must be paid to the landowners.

He said the situation is creating problems for some companies in the area who have taken over some oil palm plantations originally belonging to the former State Farm Corporation under the divestiture programme.