SMALLHOLDERS ENCOURAGED TO VENTURE INTO COCOA PLANTING

KOTA KINABALU (Malaysia), March 26 (Bernama) -- The Plantation Industries
and Commodities Ministry is encouraging more smallholders to venture into cocoa
cultivation as it was an important industry with tremendous spin-off effects on
the economy.

Its Minister, Bernard Dompok, said there were only few cocoa
plantations in Malaysia and if smallholders get more involved in the cultivation
of the commodity, it would reduce dependence on foreign workers.

The current grinding capacity of about 360,000 tonnes only met five per cent
of the country's cocoa requirements and the rest was imported from Indonesia and
the Ivory Coast, he told reporters after the annual general meeting of the
Penampang Cocoa Entrepreneurs Association.

Dompok, however, said Malaysia had the capacity to produce and export
cocoa-based products on a much larger scale.

"Look at the import and export aspects. If you buy 95 per cent of the beans,
once it has been grinded and exported in finished and semi-finished products,
then you are actually exporting the same amount of products and materials.

"If you get a farmer to plant it and, at the same time, process and export
it, that means you have created a lot of economic spin-off," he said.