THE production of crude palm oil (CPO) increased to 2.5 million tonnes or 13.6 percent for the period of January to September this year against 2.2 million tonnes recorded for the same period last year.
In disclosing this when delivering his winding-up speech at the State Legislative Assembly (DUN) sitting yesterday, Land Development Minister Tan Sri Dr James Masing said this was due to additional new mature areas coming into production.
According to him the total export of Sarawak’s oil palm product, consisting of palm oil, palm kernel oil, palm kernel cake and finished products also increase to 5.3 million tonnes in the first nine months compared with 4.8 million tonnes over the corresponding last year.
He informed the august House that the increase was about 0.5 million tonnes or 10.4 percent.
Masing, who is Baleh assemblyman, pointed out that this generated total export revenue of RM12.6 billion which was an increase by 17.8 per cent or about RM1.9 billion from the RM10.7 billion recorded in 2013.
Earlier, he said that the price of CPO (local delivered for Sarawak) started at a fairly good level in January this year at RM2,503 a tonne and continued to increase until it peaked in March to RM2,817 per tonne.
However, since then it has gradually declined and began sliding to below RM2,500 a tonne from June onwards while in September CPO price dropped to its lowest at RM2,005 per tonne.
“Last month it recovered to RM2,148 and thereby gives an average of RM2,425 per tonne over the past ten months. This is just slightly better than the average of RM2,294 a tonne for the same period in 2013,” he said.
He anticipated no significant upsurge in CPO price for the remaining two months of this year and into the first quarter of 2015.
“Although the biodiesel mandate of seven per cent, the extension of export tax exemption up to December 2014 and the weakening Ringgit should prop up prices, their effects are tempered by demand weakening factors which are beyond our control,” he explained.