Agartala: Tripura government has signed an agreement with Patanjali Foods Limited for Oil Palm plantations in the state under National Mission on Edible Oil – Oil Palm at a commercial scale, said agriculture and farmers welfare minister Pranajit Singharoy on Thursday.
He said the Patanjali group signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote oil Palm cultivation and set up an oil mill for extracting the oil from palms.
The state government has allotted two zones comprising Khowai, West Tripura, Sepahijala, Gomati, and South Tripura districts considering the wide scope of oil palm plantations.
“We had called for an expression of interest detailing the scope of work and our mission statement. Several organizations have participated in the bid but Patanjali Foods Ltd fulfilled all the criteria and agreed to the conditions set out by the departments,” the minister stated.
Singharoy however, pointed out that in the recent meeting of the 7th Governing Council of NITI Aayog, Chief Minister Dr. Manik Saha had spoken about an edible palm oil scheme that has targeted 530 hectares of palm oil cultivation in the state in the current financial year.
The central government has already launched the Rs 11,040 crore project of National Mission on Edible Oils—Oil Palm (NMEO-OP) with a special focus on the Northeast region and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to reduce the heavy dependence on the imports of edible oils.
The mission intends to cover an additional area of 6.5 lakh hectares for palm oil till 2025-26 and thereby reaching the target of 10 lakh hectares ultimately.
