Call for more allocation for palm oil industry

Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) director-general Ahmad Parveez Ghulam Kadir said: “However, as we are still facing labour shortage, we hope the government can address the issue and we hope there will be initiatives or programmes that assist the acceleration of mechanisation and automation in the oil palm sector to reduce the dependency of the plantation sector on labour and help to boost productivity,”

KUALA LUMPUR: There should be more allocation for the palm oil industry to further ramp up research and development (R&D) for the commodity and for the production of more downstream products, according to the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC).

The organisation’s science, environment and sustainability division director Ruslan Abdullah said Malaysia produces about 20 million tonnes of palm oil every year, which brings in about RM70bil in revenue for the country, but sadly the allocation for the industry has been very small.