100% certified sustainable palm oil exports by 2019, say industry captains

Malaysian palm oil futures dipped on Monday evening, hitting a two-week low, on expectations that official production data due later this week will show rising output in July.

PUTRAJAYA: Captains of the Malaysian palm oil industry are committed to having all their palm oil exports MSPO-certified by end-2019.

At a special dialogue session held in Putrajaya, the industry captains pledged their support to the government's initiative by committing to double their combined MSPO-certified hectarage by end-2017.

AS at June 2017, only 237,509 of a total 3,520,833 hectares of estate plantation are MSPO certified, constituting only about 4.1% of MSPO certified hectarage out of the 5,763,627 hectares of total oil palm plantation in Malaysia.

The captains of industry were also encouraged to diversify their export markets as the Asia Pacific region is expected to increase its MPO imports by an extra 350,000 metric tonnes in 2017, leading up to an additional 692,000 metric tonnes in 2020.

In 2016, Asean countries imported a total of RM8.3bil of palm oil and palm oil products from Malaysia. The Philippines, Vietnam and Myanmar are the major importers, worth about RM2.3bil, RM1.8bil and RM932mil respectively.