Archived News

20/11/2007 (International Herald Tribune), Guangzhou - China, the biggest vegetable oil consumer in the world, will import more soybeans and palm oil to meet growing demand after local farmers reduced oilseed plantings, bolstering prices that have risen by half this year.

22/11/2007 (The Economic Times), Singapore - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has pushed hard for an early resolution of some of the key problems which are holding up the India-ASEAN free trade agreement. Commerce minister Kamal Nath met the ASEAN trade ministers and, after prolonged negotiations, it was decided that the FTA could be finalised by May 2008. The original deadline for finalising the agreement was July 2007.

22/11/2007 (Business Standard) - Even as negotiations on the ambitious Indo-Asean foreign trade agreement (FTA) remain deadlocked, experts suggest the way forward will be to leave the sticky points aside for the time being and proceed ahead with concluding the treaty

21/11/2007 (Talking Retail) - Sainsbury's has banned the use of non-sustainable palm oil from its own-brand foods.The supermarket group announced today that all palm oil used in its own-brand food would now come from certified sustainable sources.

21/11/2007 (Guardian Unlimited) - Sainsbury's has announced a ban on an ingredient used in tens of thousands of its products that is blamed for the destruction of tropical rainforests.

22/11/2007 (Business Standard) - In a small but significant step forward, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said negotiations for the proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the 10-member Asean would be wrapped up by March next year and that India would show “necessary flexibility” to achieve this goal.

21/11/2007 (The Star Online), Guangzhou - Palm oil output in Malaysia, the world’s second-biggest producer of the vegetable oil, may rise next year as oil palm trees mature, providing higher yields, Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Datuk Peter Chin Fah Kui said.

21/11/2007 (The Star Online),Kuching - The state government has no immediate plans to venture into the production of biofuel using crude palm oil (CPO).

20/11/2007 (Daily Express), Kota Kinabalu - The State Government has been urged to take up with the Federal Government the issue of double taxation on the palm oil industry in Sabah.

20/11/2007 (The New Straits Times Online) - Bursa Malaysia, the global benchmark for crude palm oil futures, is taking more initiatives to promote the international trading of the commodity which has become the world’s second most popular edible oil.

21/11/2007 (The Economic Times), Singapore - The India-Asean FTA, which is at the core of India’s look east policy, was to have kicked off from early 2008. This was the broad timeline decided at the India-Asean meet at Cebu city, Philippines. The two sides had committed to finalise the FTA by July 2007 and had agreed to start business by early 2008. That, of course, did not happen. There have been too many last mile problems in sewing up details of the deal.

20/11/2007 (The Oregonian), Port of Grays Harbor - Huge pipes glint against a dull coastal sky, coiling from storage tanks standing six stories high to reactors to distillers to yet more tanks. Biodiesel - At a Washington state plant, all the oils used to make nonfossil fuel raise their own environmental red flags.