The Malaysian palm oil board (MPOB) expects the crude palm oil price to strengthen this year, with an average price of rm3600 per ton, mainly because the soybean oil price is expected to strengthen and the growth of palm oil production slows down.
Dr. Ahmed paviz gulam Kadir, director of MPOB, said that with the socio-economic recovery of many countries, the world crude palm oil and soybean oil prices rose year-on-year from January to June 2021. Tight supply in the global vegetable oil market also boosted palm oil prices.
In the first half of 2021, the average price of crude palm oil was rm4061.5 per ton, an increase of rm1628 or 66.9% compared with rm2433.50 in the same period in 2020. Meanwhile, in the first half of this year, Malaysia’s palm oil export value also reached rm28.87 billion, an increase of rm7.69 billion or 36.3% over rm21.19 billion in the same period of last year.
However, due to the fierce competition of other vegetable oils and the policies of importing countries, Malaysia’s palm oil exports decreased by 9.3% year-on-year to 7.07 million tons in the first half of 2021. However, Dr. Kadir said that the overall impact of the epidemic on Malaysia’s palm oil export demand is small, because palm oil is an essential product for both edible and non edible industries.
In the first half of this year, Malaysia’s exports of palm oil and products decreased by 8.5% year-on-year to 11.14 million tons. Over the same period, the total output of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) decreased by 7.2% year-on-year to 42.76 million tons due to labor shortage.
Kadir believes that plantations now need to seriously consider adopting mechanization and automation to solve the problem of manpower shortage.
Source: Master Boyi
Post time: Sep-03-2021