Malaysia's MSPO Certification Scheme To Be Revised - Minister Mah

KUALA LUMPUR, April 6 (Bernama) -- The principles and criteria in the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) certification scheme will be revised to make it comparable to international standards. Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Mah Siew Keong said the ministry in this regard would conduct missions abroad to promote MSPO and initiate cooperations with embassies of leading palm oil importing countries in Kuala Lumpur. "Recently, we held a meeting with 14 ambassadors from Europe and we also arranged visits for European Union members of parliament to our parliament," he said during the question and answer session at the Dewan Rakyat (Malaysian parliament) Thursday. He was responding to a supplementary question from Hasbullah Osman. MSPO is the legal code standard on best practices from planting palm oil to processing and will be implemented in stages from 2018. Mah said implementation of the MSPO mandatory certification would be made in stages from Dec 31 next year, with its full implementation starting on December 31, 2019 for branding of local palm oil. To a supplementary question from Abdul Khalid Ibrahim on the quality of MSPO, he said 95 per cent of its criteria were similar to current world standard certification and more affordable and appropriate for the country. -- BERNAMA