KUALA LUMPUR: Indonesia and Malaysia will embark on more joint-ministerial missions to western countries to better tackle mounting barriers to palm oil trade.
In a telephone interview with Business Times today, Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Datuk Seri Mah Siew Keong said Indonesia and Malaysia are tightening co-operation as anti-palm oil campaigns are stunting the growth of the oil palm industry and hurting global palm oil exports.
For the past decade, palm oil’s reputation is being increasingly defamed via food labelling laws in Australia, and attempts to raise tax on palm oil imports into Europe. Such defamatory campaigns, fueled by twisted half-truths and lies, have manifested as palm oil trade barriers.
With mounting false allegations of oil palm plantings being unfriendly to the environment, palm oil exports are essentially denied equal opportunity to trade compared with competing vegetable oils such as soy, rapeseed and sunflower.
"There will be more ministerial missions to major palm oil importing countries in 2017," Mah said, adding that such joint efforts will be carried out under the Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries (CPOPC) platform.
Back in Nov 2015, at the Asean Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and Indonesia's President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) announced that each country would contribute an initial US$5 million to establish the CPOPC.
Following Jokowi's recent Cabinet reshuffle and Indonesian lawmakers enacting dedicated legislation to better regulate oil palm planting and palm oil trading, the jurisdiction of the CPOPC has now been transferred to the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs from the Coordinating Ministry of Maritime Affairs.
The CPOPC is a common platform to promote palm oil and neutralise trade barriers as Indonesia and Malaysia collectively produce 85 per cent of the world’s basic cooking ingredient.
There are some 10 million small farmers tending oil palms across the equatorial belt of the globe. Indonesia and Malaysia supply 50 million tonnes of palm cooking oil annually as a kitchen staple among billions of people living in China, India and other developing nations.
While the CPOPC seeks to enhance the welfare of oil palm smallholders and develop a global framework for sustainable-certified palm oil, its tasks include promoting development of green economic zones across Indonesia and Malaysia.
The CPOPC is also a platform for experience-sharing on biodiesel mandate implementation to address energy and environment-sustainability issues. Indonesia is currently implementing a B20 biodiesel mandate.
Mah noted that the CPOPC membership, under a government-to-government framework, is open to Brazil, Colombia, Thailand, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and Uganda.
Mah also said the CPOPC is establishing a private sector and smallholders’ forum to outline effective measures towards strengthening cooperation between Indonesia and Malaysia with regard to oil palm planters’ interests.