Indonesia, Malaysia to send palm oil envoys to EU over deforestation law

FILE PHOTO: Workers load palm oil fresh fruit bunches to be transported from the collector site to CPO factories in Pekanbaru, Riau province, Indonesia. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan

JAKARTA: Indonesia and Malaysia, the world's biggest palm oil producers, plan to send envoys to the European Union to discuss the impact of the bloc's new deforestation law on their palm oil sectors, ministers from the Southeast Asian countries said on Thursday.

The EU in December agreed on a deforestation law that requires companies to produce a due diligence statement showing when and where their commodities were produced and provide "verifiable" information that they were not grown on land deforested after 2020, or risk hefty fines.