Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 24 ISSUE 1
Written by Sunday B. AKPAN, Glory E. EDET, Aniefok A. UMOERN

The production of oil palm fruit and its derivatives was once the prime mover of the Nigeria’s economy a few decades ago, but currently, the country is a net importer of these commodities. The sub-unit holds great potential in terms of job creation, poverty reduction, raw materials for agro-based industries and overall growth of the country’s economy. In recent times, the governmenthas articulated and implemented numerous policies, programs and institutions to re-brand the sub-unit but to no avail. Beckoned on these evidences, the study was developed to examine the production trends in this sub-unit and investigate its link with some selected macroeconomic variables as alternative ways of examining the problems of the sub-unit. The research utilized secondary data from the years 1981 to 2023. The data were gathered from the United State Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), World Bank, and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The properties of the series were tested to confirm their stability. The co-integration of the series was establish by autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound F-test. The trends analyses revealed a 1.68%, 3.50%, 4.63%, 4.83%, and 2.19% annual exponential growth in oil palm fruit, palm kernel, palm kernel oil, palm kernel meal and palm oil respectively. The study found significant relationship between the outputs of oil palm fruit, palm kernel, palm kernel oil, palm kernel meal and palm oil and the domestic credit injected in the economy, per capita income, nominal exchange rate, and inflation rate in the short and long run periods. To upsurge the sub-unit production, it is strongly recommended among others that adequate credit facilities should be provided for the production of the primary product (oil palm fruit) and the expanding value chain.

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