France Wants To Be Fair To Palm Oil, Soyaoil Producers -- Envoy

By S. Joan Santani KUALA LUMPUR, July 19 (Bernama) -- The French government wants to be fair to palm oil and soyaoil producers, said France's Ambassador to Malaysia, Christophe Penot. The move followed objections from Indonesia and Malaysia, the world's largest crude palm oil (CPO) producers, to France's plan to impose an additional tax on CPO imports and other palm oil-based products by 2017. Penot said the French parliament has decided not to introduce the import tax on palm oil for now. The government will study new proposals for all the vegetable oils, he said. "This is because there are some discrepancies as olive oil is highly tax and palm as well as soyaoil were not taxed," he told Bernama. France will be initiating a proposal in the next two months to certify products that were produced in a sustainable way and will not tax them, he said. The proposals will be discussed in parliament, he said. "So now we are encouraging Malaysia and Indonesia to produce more sustainable palm oil. This is one of the issues we are working on with the Malaysian government on how to certify that palm oil are produced in a sustainable way. "It would be fair. The new proposal will not discriminate palm oil against other oils," said Penot. The proposal, once it has been approved by the French parliament, which will likely be in September or October this year, will come into effect six months later, he said. "At the moment there's no change, and we are working closely with the Malaysian government on this," he said. The French government had initially wanted to impose an additional tax on imports of CPO to reduce deforestation and protect French citizens from negative health effects from consuming the edible oil. Palm oil producers opposed the additional tax. If it were implemented, exporters and smallholders will be affected as exporters need to fork out an additional tax of €90 (€1 = RM4.40) per tonne on top of the existing €104 per tonne import tariff. Furthermore, the additional tax, which will put pressure on the CPO prices, could subsequently hurt the smallholders in the country. Over the years, the Malaysian government had set policies to promote renewable energy and sustainable process. Meanwhile, in a statement recently, Malaysian Palm Oil Council Chief Executive, Dr Yusof Basiron, said Malaysia was a good friend of France, and French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault had promised Malaysians that he would not tax palm oil. He said Ayrault had promised the 300,000 small farmers in Malaysia that France would not harm them with a new tax. "We expect this promise to be kept," he said. -- BERNAMA