Committee to help palm oil products gain access to France

KOTA KINABALU: The Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities will set up a committee with France’s Agriculture Ministry to help Malaysia’s palm oil products gain access into the French market.

Minister Tan Sri Bernard Dompok said he had been in correspondence with France’s Agriculture Minister and was still awaiting a response.

“During my recent visit to France, we had discussions with the Agriculture Minister (Stéphane Le Foll) and we agreed to have a committee on the oil palm industry.

“It will discuss all matters concerning the industry,” he told reporters after opening the third International Plantation Industry Conference and Exhibition here yesterday.

He said this in response to Malaysian Palm Oil Council chief executive officer Tan Sri Yusof Basiron’s statement that it was pointless to produce more palm oil certified by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) if it could not even gain access into France.

Yusof had said he was dissatisfied with the RSPO for failing to help the growers who had produced 4.78 million tonnes of roundtable-certified oil in the market.

Dompok said the RSPO should be more proactive to defend the position of the palm oil industry when there were quarters questioning the industry’s ability to grow oil palm in a sustainable manner.
“The RSPO should be more positive in this sense.

“Otherwise, it would seem like it does not believe in the work it is doing.

“What’s the point in telling people of our sustainable practices if we are not supporting the products that we certified,” he said.



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