Indonesia issues palm oil export permits Musk backtracks on job cuts
JAKARTA - Indonesia has issued around 302,000 tonnes of palm oil export permits since the country restarted exports, senior minister Luhut Pandjaitan said on Sunday, while reassuring farmers and exporters that authorities would speed up the permit process.
Indonesia, the world’s biggest palm oil producer, on April 28 halted exports of the oil, which it uses for cooking, in efforts to control soaring prices at home.
The government allowed exports to resume from May 23, but put in place policies to safeguard domestic supply, including the so-called Domestic Market Obligation (DMO) under which producers must first sell a portion of their products at home.
The policy changes had resulted in red tape and slow issuance of export permits, industry groups and traders said, which helped keep global palm oil prices high amid weak output from rival Malaysia.
An Indonesia Palm Oil Association official said on Friday a number of palm oil mills have stopped buying palm fruits from farmers due to a lack of exports, while farmers complained that the price of fruit was yet to recover to levels seen before the ban after falling by about 75 per cent.
“Acceleration measures will be taken if we feel that prices of palm oil fruits at the farmer level are still too low,” Mr Luhut said, reiterating that the government is setting aside 1 million tonnes of export quota.
TESLA Inc chief executive Elon Musk said on Saturday that the electric vehicle maker’s total headcount will increase over the next 12 months, but the number of salaried staff should be little changed, backtracking from an email just two days ago saying that job cuts of 10 per cent were needed.
“Total headcount will increase, but salaried should be fairly flat,” Mr Musk tweeted https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533176789022957568 in a reply to an unverified Twitter account that made a “prediction” that Tesla’s headcount would increase over the next 12 months.
Mr Musk in an email to Tesla executives on Thursday, which was seen by Reuters on Friday, said he has a “super bad feeling” about the US economy and needed to cut jobs by about 10 per cent.
In another email to employees on Friday, Mr Musk said Tesla would reduce salaried headcount by 10 per cent, as it has become “overstaffed in many areas.” But “hourly headcount will increase,” he said.
Tesla’s shares sank 9.2 per cent on Friday on the news.