Published: Tuesday February 14, 2012 MYT 1:06:00 PM
Updated: Tuesday February 14, 2012 MYT 1:07:16 PM

Lack of land space causes drastic dip in country's cocoa production

By VANES DEVINDRAN

SERIAN (Sarawak): Stiff competition among the commodities, particularly for land space, caused Malaysia's cocoa sector to suffer a 70% dip in production last year.

This required the country to import 295,000 tonnes of cocoa seeds from countries like Indonesia, the Ivory Coast and Ghana at the cost of RM1.7bil, Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Tan Sri Bernard Dompok said Tuesday.

Speaking at the launching of the state-level domestic market support service programme and cocoa planting certification scheme at Kampung Bunan Gega here, he said Malaysia needed more than 300,000 tonnes of cocoa seeds each year but managed to produce only 5,000 tonnes last year.