Privatization Spurs Growth in Togo Cotton Industry
May 6, 2010 Bloomberg
Etonam Akakpo-Ahianyo
Togo plans to increase cotton production by 67 percent to 50,000 metric tons this year, after farmers took a stake in the previously-state-controlled cotton company, a growers’ association said.
Farmers will plant 50,000 hectares (123,553 acres) of the fiber, compared with about 40,000 hectares in 2009, using 10,000 metric tons of fertilizer, said Baba Djabakatie, general secretary of the Togolese Cotton Producers’ Federation.
The federation, along with the Togolese government, jointly owns the New Togo Cotton Co., formed in early 2009 after the liquidation of the state-owned Cotton Co. of Togo.
“Due to the privatization process which is going on in the sector, we are now, for the first time, joint owners of the cotton-selling company,” Djabakatie said from Sokode, 346 kilometers (215 miles) north of the capital, Lome. “We are motivated to do our best to boost production.”
Togo had as much as 202,000 hectares of cotton under cultivation in 2005, according to the Washington, D.C.-based International Cotton Advisory Committee. In April 2009, the World Bank gave Togo a $20 million grant to reform parts of the economy, including the cotton, phosphates and financial industries, previously dominated by the state.
Togo’s cotton is produced by largely small-scale farmers, using an average of two hectares or less per farm, said Djabakatie, whose association oversees about 300,000 farmers.
(Story found in original format here.)
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