PRIME Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has been featured in a video dismissing the stigma and global movement against palm oil as a ploy of competitors.

“The main campaign against palm oil is because it competes against other vegetable oils.

“And obviously, in the competition, the competitors can try their level best to make palm oil rejected by consumers,” Dr Mahathir said in the three-minute video that was uploaded on Primary Industries Minister Teresa Kok’s Facebook page last night.

“But actually there is no basis for that. It is merely the question of competing edible oils,” he said.

The 93-year-old then vouched for the edible oil’s nutritional value, saying that he was consumer himself.

“For a long, long time now, people have been consuming Malaysian palm oil. I do consume palm oil as the preferred oil when the cook prepares food for me,” he said.

“This palm oil has been accused of having deleterious effect on people who consume it, but the palm oil industry has submitted the oil for examination in several laboratories in America and they have found no evidence of bad effects from the consumption of palm oil.”

The video is part of a promotional campaign called “Love MY Palm Oil – A 5 Star Malaysian Product”, a year-long initiative in which the ministry hopes to “instil national pride” and “greater appreciation” for palm oil, its socio-economic importance, nutrition and non-food applications.

Dr Mahathir also addressed accusations that the palm oil industry is to be blamed for mass deforestation, saying that that more than 50% of Malaysia’s surface area is covered by forests.

“In Malaysia we have been careful about preserving our forests. Over 50% of the surface area of Malaysia is covered by forests. Of course palm trees are also trees that absorb carbon dioxide,” he said.

He called on Malaysians to support the use of palm oil as “it is good for them and it is good for the economy”.

European lawmakers have increasingly voiced concerns that palm oil use should be curbed as it indirectly emits greenhouse gases during planting and cultivation.

Last year, European lawmakers approved measures to limit the use of palm oil in biofuels, ahead of an eventual ban in 2030.

The European Union, where more than 60% of palm imports are used for non-food products and biodiesel, has pushed back the ban on vegetable oil products in biofuels from 2021 to 2030.

France, however, has plans to curb imports by ending tax incentives for palm oil biodiesel, while Norway has already approved plans to ban biofuels containing palm oil from 2020.

Malaysia’s palm oil industry recorded a 3.6% growth in exports last year, but crude palm oil (CPO) prices declined to an average of RM2,232 a tonne, down from RM2,783 the same period in 2017.

CPO production this year is expected to be more than 20 million tonnes compared to 19.5 last year, with prices forecast to recover to more than RM2,500 per tonne, Malaysian Palm Oil Board chairman Mohd Bakke Salleh told a palm oil outlook conference yesterday. – January 18, 2019.