The world’s biggest palm oil exporter, Indonesia, aims to stop exporting the crude form of the vegetable oil in the future in favour of refined products, President Joko Widodo said on Wednesday.
The resources rich country has been pushing for development of downstream industry for its natural resources at home and restrict exports of raw material to encourage that, including for ores such as nickel and copper.
“At some point, exports of CPO must stop. Exports must be in the form of cosmetics, margarine, biodiesel or other derivatives,” said Jokowi, as the president is known, in a speech to government officials.
CPO makes up around 21per cent of Indonesia’s total 34 million tonnes of palm oil exports last year and roughly 9per cent of the January-August exports this year.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Bernadette Christina Munthe; Additional reporting by Fransiska Nangoy, Editing by Louise Heavens)