Abidjan, February 18, 2022 - Prime Minister Patrick Achi encouraged the increase in the local processing rate of Ivorian raw materials, in particular cashew nuts, on Wednesday, February 16, 2022 in Abidjan-Port Bouët, at the joint opening of the 7th edition of the Global Cashew Convention and the 4th edition of the National Days of Cashew Exporters of Côte d'Ivoire (JNEC-CI).

“It's about radically increasing the local processing rate of our raw materials,” said Patrick Achi.

For him, this will create more income for the brave peasants, more jobs for talented youth and more wealth for all the Ivorian people.

To this end, continued the Prime Minister, the government is working to create a relevant and efficient ecosystem, in terms of infrastructure and reforms, to streamline and promote the establishment of manufacturers in the sector.

As a result, a basket of fiscal, regulatory, administrative and operational incentives were adopted.

In addition, there is the implementation of the Project to Promote the Competitiveness of the Cashew Value Chain (PPCA). This program, at a cost of $200 million, aims to strengthen the organization and governance of the cashew value chain in order to reduce marketing costs; to increase the productivity of cashew cultivation; to improve access to the market for raw nuts; and to strengthen our industrial infrastructure.

In addition, the creation of the Cashew Innovation and Technologies Center allows Côte d'Ivoire to have an efficient training and technical assistance tool, both to units already installed and to promoters of new investments.

“The favorable environment thus created by these measures allows us to say with pride and enthusiasm that Côte d'Ivoire is becoming an “El Dorado” for cashew nut processing”, welcomed the Head of the Ivorian Government.

According to him, it is because of this dynamic of efficiency and consistency that the quantity processed locally increased from 40,000 tons in 2017 to more than 130,000 tons in 2021.

The Prime Minister also indicated that specific measures are also identified for national actors, who logically have fewer financial or technical capacities at this stage, in order to allow them to grow and occupy strategic places in this key agro-industrial fabric for our country.

He strongly urged multinationals to establish partnerships with local actors in order to accelerate their development in the sector in a winning partnership.

The ambition of the President of the Republic, Alassane Ouattara, for Côte d'Ivoire, he recalled, is to process more than 50% of raw nut production locally by 2025, while continuing to play a major role in the global trade in raw nuts.