‘Work with Indonesia to fight the palm oil ban’

“Therefore, we see this as a serious matter and since we are the chairman of the Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries (CPOPC), we will use the platform to work with Indonesia, the world’s largest palm oil producer, to fight against the ban.

“We hope the EU can be considerate as palm oil is our fifth major export product,” Kok said, adding that she would be going to Indonesia next month.

As an additional measure to combat this issue, the minister said her ministry would chair a palm oil war zone meeting involving the International Trade and Industry Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, and the Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change Ministry to discuss how the government would deal with the ban.

Meanwhile, Kok shared some positive news as the price of crude palm oil (CPO) is slowly picking up from RM1,700 per tonne (due to high production) in the last three months to slightly above RM2,000 per tonne.

“You can see there is a gradual increase in the CPO price and we hope through more trade arrangements with importing countries, as well as our campaigns and promotional efforts, we can push the price to RM2,700 per tonne or more this year,” she said.

Kok said palm oil and palmbased products had generated RM62.7 billion from January-November 2018 versus RM71.4 billion recorded for the same period in 2017.

“However in comparison, the export volume for palm oil and palm-based products increased by 3.7 per cent to 23.2 million tonnes during January-November last year,” she added. — Bernama