Produce larger volume of edible oil than current production

GENERALLY, the country of Myanmar consumes about one million tonnes of edible oil per year. Although 8 million acres of land are placed under edible oil crops in Myanmar every year, milling of such crops to produce 200,000 tons of edible oil per year.

 

Edible oil crops such as groundnut, sunflower, oil palm and mustard are cultivated in the central area and other parts of the nation. Sesame is placed on more than 3,760,000 acres of land, groundnut on over 2,700,000 acres, mustard on over 110,000 acres, sunflower on over 640,000 acres and oil palm on over 390,000 acres.

 

Primarily, oil millers prefer to emphasize the milling of groundnut and sesame for the production of edible oil in addition to some volume of sunflower oil and palm oil. In a statistic on the oil consumption, Myanmar people consume six visses of edible oil per year. Hence, Myanmar needs to produce 600,000 tonnes of edible oil yearly for ensuring local oil sufficiency.

 

As the additional consumption of edible oil, hotels, restaurants, fried shops and other foodstuff industries use various kinds of edible oil. So, people from the whole country need about one million tonnes of edible oil per year but local oil mills operate production of some 200,000 tons per year. Such products cannot give coverage of edible oil consumption for the people.

 

That is why businesspersons import about 800,000 tonnes of edible oil from exporter countries in Asia yearly. Without importation, locally produced edible oil will not give sufficiency for the consumer people. Myanmar farmers cultivate groundnut and sesame on their croplands.

 

They aim to sell export quality seeds of groundnut to merchants. Export of groundnut and sesame seeds is more cost-effective than milling to produce groundnut oil for sale. Foreign countries purchase Myanmar’s groundnut and sesame seeds for the production of value-added foodstuffs to get higher prices. If milling of edible oil crops can be undertaken more, import of palm oil can be reduced.

 

 In fact, the strength of the nation lies within. Myanmar needs to increase more sown acreage of edible oil crops and mill the increased volume of edible oil to ensure local oil sufficiency so as to reduce import volume of oil and cut spending on foreign exchange.