Archived News

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.

20/11/2007 (Bloomberg) - China, the world's biggest vegetable oil consumer, will need to import more soybeans, palm oil and other oilseed products to meet growing demand after local farmers reduced plantings, a state-owned grain trader said.

17/11/2007(Reuters), Jakarta - Greenpeace vowed on Saturday to keep up a blockade on a key palm oil port in Indonesia's Sumatra as part of protest against forest destruction, as a tanker it had been trying to block for three days managed to leave the port.

19/11/2007 (Maritime Global Net) - ENVIRONMENTAL activcits hel up the sailing of a palm oil tanker from Dumai, Indonesia as protest against the increase palnting of oil palm on former peat and rainforest. With a banner reading 'Palm Oil Kills Forests and Climate', Greenpeace's vessel Rainbow Warrior was anchored next to 40,293 dwt, Liberian-flag tanker Westama, tanker blocking it from leaving port.

18/11/2007 (The Hindu), Thiruvananthapuram - State general secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha Sathyan Mokeri has urged the Centre to ban the import of palm oil as it will lead to steep fall in the price of coconut and coconut oil, adversely affecting the farmers of Kerala.

19/11/2007 (Houston Chronicle), Singapore — Southeast Asian officials Monday urged India to make further tariff concessions on agricultural products and petroleum to end a deadlock in talks to create a free trade area.