The Union minister of the Ministry of Commerce highlighted manufacturing of value-added coconut products including food and consumer goods at the value-addition training on coconut-based products held on 2 October.
The Union minister urged the trainees to scale up their skills to manufacture coconut-rooted food products with value addition as those products can penetrate foreign markets. That project aims to fulfil the needs of coconut producers and coconut-based products businesspersons.
The experts will offer courses with practical and theoretical approaches to manufacture value-added food products such as coconut ice cream, jelly, coconut oil, coconut powder and coconut candies and non-food products such as soaps and coconut shell charcoal.
The exports of fresh coconut and dried coconut declined this year compared to the volume of the previous years. Therefore, it is necessary to endeavour coconut export promotion as well, he emphasized.
Myanmar commenced coconut exports with 16 tonnes in the 2020-2021 financial year. The export volumes were registered at 206 tonnes worth US$0.082 million in the 2021-2022 FY and 319 tonnes worth $0.128 million in six months (April-September) of the 2022-2023 FY, as per the Commerce Ministry. — TWA/EM
