Government to take over SIPL funding

Daboase (W/R),July 16, GNA-Government will from this month take over the funding of the Pulp and Paper Mill Project of the Subri Industrial Plantation (SIPL).

This follows the termination of financing of the Mill by the African Development Bank.

The government has 71 per cent share in the Mill. Government's funding would end only when a strategic investor takes over, Mr George Naah, Managing Director of SIPL, a limited liability company, told a parliamentary select committee on Food and Agriculture on Thursday.

Mr Naah said the ADB has in the past 14 years invested a total of 19 million dollars in the project.

Mr Naah said discussions were underway with a private investor from the United States to take over the company. He said 200 million dollars would be required to start the pulp and paper mill. He said the mill could start production within three years by which time the company's 1,000 hectare plantation of "Gmelina Arborea", the raw material for the mill, would have been expanded to 11,000 hectares.

Mr. Naah said the company is considering an out-growers scheme for the cultivation of "Gmelina Arborea". He said lack of funding was making it difficult to maintain the plantations and that if this continues, it would affect the volume and quality of its products.

Mr Naah said if the plantation is not properly maintained, the prospective investor would pay a price lower than the market price for it.

The committee also visited the Coconut Disease Project at Aiyinasi in the Nzema East District where Mr Samuel Agyepong, Supervisor of the project, told the members that coconut seedlings which can resist the Cape St Paul Wilt disease have been replanted on destroyed 30-hectare Coconut Plantations in the Western and Central Regions.

The replanting was undertaken between May and July, this year, he said, adding that 300,000 hectares of coconut plantations would be replanted in the two regions within the next five years.