MALAYSIAN MINISTER CALLS ON SHRI SHARAD YADAV

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Datoseiro Dr. Lim Keng Yaik, Malaysian Minister for Primary Industries called on Shri Sharad Yadav, Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution here today and apprised him of the possible high demand and low availability of palm oil from Malaysia in the coming years. There was considerable rise in demand for crude palm oil from Europe, Thailand, China and Egypt apart from India, he pointed out.

The Government of Malaysia is considering to adopt some mechanism by which the price of crude palm oil for the state of Gujarat could be subsidised. The Malaysian Minister will be meeting the Gujarat Chief Minister to discuss this issue during his current visit to India. The subsidised supply of crude palm oil will be for Gujarat alone as the country is not able to do it for the whole of India, the Malaysian Minister indicated. However, Dr. Lim Keng Yaik expressed the inability of his country to supply crude palm oil duty free to processors in India for protecting the interest of Malaysian oil mills.

India imported 42.14 lakh metric tonnes of edible oils during 2001-2002 as the edible oil demand in the country was 103 lakh metric tonnes against the domestic production of 61 lakh metric tonnes. Malaysia produced 11.9 million tonnes of palm oil in 2002 against the total world production of 24.8 million tonnes.