RANAU: The country’s exports of cocoa and cocoa products last year totalled about RM3.7 billion, says Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Tan Sri Bernard Dompok.
The main export markets were the United States, Japan and Europe, he said, adding Malaysia is Asia Pacific’s largest cocoa grinding nation and the world’s fifth largest after the Netherlands, Cote d’Ivoire, Germany and the United States.
Last year, Malaysia’s cocoa industry ground 299,525 tonnes of cocoa seeds to produce cocoa butter, cocoa paste, cocoa powder and other cocoa products, he said in his speech at the launch of a cocoa cluster farming course and annual general meeting of the Ranau Cocoa Growers Association here yesterday.
To facilitate cocoa cultivation, the government has allocated RM25.2 million to develop 3,147 ha. of new cocoa farms nationwide last year and this year, he said.
A total of 630 ha. in Sabah has been identified for the new cocoa farm programme this year including 205 ha. in Ranau, 200 ha. in Tenom, 100 ha. in Tawau and 125 ha. in the state’s north coast, he said, while urging interested land-owning Sabahans to apply for assistance from the fund.
Programme participants will get a RM8,000 incentive per hectare, in the form of quality cocoa seedlings, agricultural inputs, cocoa growing courses, and farm clearing assistance.
Dompok said the government has also approved a RM28 millin allocation to the Malaysian Cocoa Board this year to raise the productivity of current cocoa farms and rehabilitate less productive ones. — Bernama