New Delhi: In a bid to undertake oil palm plantation across 38,000 hectares in Arunachal Pradesh, Patanjali Foods is set to lay the foundation stone for setting up a mill in East Siang district on Wednesday, news agency ANI reported.
“We have already established two nurseries at Pasighat and Holangi and are in the process of establishing three more nurseries in Lower Siang district at Kherram, FTC, and Dipa,” Patanjali Foods said in a statement.
The objective behind setting up the mill is to boost the state’s economy and help generate employment with an increase in the income of farmers, the company said.
According to the report, the company intends to cultivate palm across 5 lakh hectares across the country under the National Mission on Edible Oils – Oil Palm, of which 3.2 will be in the northeast region.
The estimated annual palm oil production by Patanjali is 7.5 lakh tonnes, which is expected to be Rs 10,500 crore worth of foreign exchange.
Currently, Patanjali has oil palm plantations in 55 districts across 11 states, including Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Gujarat, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Mizoram, and Tripura.
Notably, the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August 2021 gave its approval to launch the National Mission on Edible Oils – Oil Palm (NMEO-OP), a new centrally sponsored scheme with special focus on Northeast region and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
A financial outlay of Rs 11,040 crore has been made for the scheme, out of which Rs 8,844 crore is the central government share and Rs 2,196 crore is the state share and this includes the viability gap funding too.
Under this scheme, it is proposed to cover an additional area of 6.5 lakh hectares for oil palm till 2025-26 and thereby reaching the target of 10 lakh hectares.
The production of Crude Palm Oil (CPO) is expected to go up to 11.20 lakh tonnes by 2025-26 and up to 28 lakh tonnes by 2029-30.
It is to be noted that India is the world’s second-largest consumer and leading importer of vegetable oil, and it meets 55-60 per cent of its need through imports.
Although the oilseed production has grown over the years, the production has lagged behind its consumption, resulting in continuous dependence on imports.