KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is set to open a regional palm oil office in Tehran, Iran to push the commodity’s growth in the Middle East, following the breakdown of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement.
Since the trade embargo on Iran was lifted in January last year, Malaysia exports about RM1 billion of palm oil to the country.
Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Datuk Seri Mah Siew Keong want to double that number by 2019. Mah said he will spend a five-day visit to Tehran next week where he will meet Iran’s Health, Finance, Trade Industry and Agriculture Ministers to discuss more trade for palm oil.
“Iran is strategically located and it has a big potential to be a buyer of our palm oil and be a centre for the region,” he said during a press conference in Menara PGRM on Thursday.
He expects the office to be up and running by mid-2017 but said Malaysia still faced challenges in getting the Middle Eastern country to fully be on board with palm oil.
Malaysia, the second biggest palm oil exporter in the world, when the United States under President Donald Trump pulled out of the TPP, which could have slashed taxes and import duties for 95% of palm oil products to the US.
Mah was confident Malaysia could still grow its palm oil exports by five to eight percent this year, with expectations of crude palm oil (CPO) trading better this year, as an average price of RM2,700 to RM2,800 per ton has been forecast for 2017 compared with about RM2,600 per ton last year.
