Govt supports private palm oil mills: Tawfiq
Published on: Monday, March 02, 2015
Tawau: The Sabah State Government is always in support of private sector initiatives or private companies keen on setting up more palm oil mills.State Minister of Youth and Sports Datuk Tawfiq Abu Bakar Titingan said the presence of more such mills will encourage healthy competition among the owners."The competition will lead to an improvement in product quality, services, skills and technology expansion, while offering competitive pricing.
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"Planters and oil palm smallholders can choose mills that offer the best pricing and services," he added.Tawfiq said this when officiating the palm oil mill owned by Kumpulan Segalong at the KM65 Jalan Tawau-Kunak, near here, Sunday.He also said a larger pool of mills will provide more job opportunities for locals, especially the youths.Meanwhile, at the event, Kumpulan Segalong presented a RM5,000 contribution to SRJK © in Kunak.
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Meanwhile, oil palm plantations have been unfairly implicated by non-government organisations as the primary driver of deforestation, but the crop takes up only 0.1pc or 15.6 million ha worldwide.On the other hand, the livestock industry in 2012 utilised 31pc or 4.7 billion ha of the world's total land area – 300 times more land area than that used by the palm oil industry, says Malaysian Palm Oil Council Chief Executive Officer Tan Sri Dr Yusof Basiron.
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He says that our agriculture industry takes up only 23pc or 7.8 million ha in the country, while we have set aside a vast forest reserve of 18.3 million ha, or 56.5pc of land area. "We have much more forest reserve compared to Western countries," he says.Yusof adds that this fallacy regarding oil palm and deforestation perpetuated by NGOs stems from a lack of research done on the crop. "The NGOs are concerned about the rapid rate of land clearing and the palm oil industry is 'greenmailed' as the driver of deforestation which is untrue. For the NGOs, we are 'greenwashing' but for us they are 'greenmailing' the industry," he says at the sideline of the recent Reach & Remind Friends of the Industry Seminar 2015 & Dialogue.Furthermore, oil palm plantations are a "net carbon sink" that absorbs large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere daily, which mitigates climate change, says Yusof. "Oil palm removes 1,719 to 1,897 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, reducing the carbon debt of the industry over time," he says.Among the criteria for Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) certification is that oil palm should not be cultivated on forest reserve land.This is not a newly introduced criterion but "an ongoing practice" all this while, notes Yusof.On the nutritional value of palm oil, Yusof says studies have shown that saturated fats from this vegetable oil is beneficial to health."The assumption that saturated fats at any level of intake is deleterious is no longer supported by scientific evidence. Studies also show that the components such as palm phenolics in palm oil may even help reduce the risk of cancer," he says.Yusof denounces the "no palm oil" labelling campaign in Europe as "misleading, mischievous and illegal under the viewpoint of food legislations."Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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