(Ecofin Agency) - Since the start of the commercialization campaign on December 1, 2016, the Société nationale des oléagineux du Sénégal (Sonacas SA) bought more than 82,000 tons of groundnuts, APS was told by Pape Dieng, the firm’s managing director.

Though it exceeds by 75,000 tons last year’s output, it remains far from the amount expected before the end of the season on April 30, knowingly 200,000 Mt. According to Dieng who affirms that FCFA22 billion are still available, over initial FCFA45 billion, to purchase the nuts from producers, the supply deficit is due to the scarcity of the groundnuts in the local market.

“As the government may not achieve its objective, the alternative for Sonacos is to wait for private operators finish stocking seedlings and sell the remainder to oil-makers,” Dieng suggested. “We are therefore waiting for this second wave to determine with exactitude the volume that Sonacos will receive during the ongoing groundnut commercialization season,” he added.

Sonacos, it should be recalled, is one of the four oil-making companies of the country. The three others are COPEOL (Coopératives des Plantes oléagineuses), U.S. WAO (West African Oil) and the Touba agroindustrial complex (CAIT). During the 2015-16 season, Senegal produced a million tons of groundnuts and projects this year to reach 1.14 million tons , data from the U.S. Development of Agriculture (USDA) reveals.

Espoir Olodo