Favourable year for coconut industry stakeholders

Dr. T.S.G. Peiris
Head of Statistics Division Coconut Research of Institute Lunuwila

COCONUT: The Statistics Division of the CRI has predicted the distribution of annual coconut production during Jan/Feb, Mar/Apr, May/Jun, Jul/Aug, Sep/Oct and Nov/Dec in 2007 would be 567, 477, 679, 451, 368 and 394 million nuts respectively, resulting the total production of 2935 million nuts as depicted in Fig. 1. This is 3.5% increase against the predicted value of 2866 million nuts for 2006.

The main reason for the increase of production in 2007 is favourable rainfall distribution received during January/February and August in almost all coconut growing areas. Further, better distribution of rainfall during this period would have significant impact on the technologies adopted by the growers.

Thus we could expect more DC mills and coconut oil mills could operate during 2007. The size and quality of nuts cannot be predicted based on the available information and the Statistics Division has been working on that aspect.

The observed national yield up to 4th pick in 2006 in 2006 was 1974 million nuts compared to 1988 million nuts predicted yield during the same period. The percentage error of the predicted value was 0.7%. The comparison of the predicted and observed value for 2006 is shown in Figure 2.