Government extends plan for oil palm replantingTuesday, July 17, 2001(The Star)- THE government has extended the closingdate for the oil palm replanting scheme 2001 by a month to July 31 toencourage wider participation from private oil palm plantations andsmallholders, Deputy Primary Industries Minister Datuk Anifah Aman said."We are confident of achieving the target of replanting 200,000ha of oldoil palm plantation as we have received applications to replant 150,045haas at July 10," he said in a press conference at the ministry yesterday.The scheme was launched on March 8.Under the scheme, which was given an allocation of RM200mil by theGovernment, an incentive of RM1,000 would be given for each hectare of oilpalm trees above 25 years which were replanted with new high-yieldingclones.An incentive of RM1,100 per ha would be given if the oil palm plantationwas replanted with rubber trees.Anifah said the replanting scheme would reduce the country's crude palmoil (CPO) production by 600,000 tonnes and that CPO price last year haddipped by 29.9% because of oversupply in the world market."We are confident that the removal of excess supply will help improve andstabilise the price of CPO in the world market," he said.He also said that the world demand for CPO would have increasedsignificantly by the time the replanted plantations mature in three orfour years."We expect the higher demand due to population growth, tapping of newmarkets and discovery of new uses for CPO," he said.Anifah said 57% of the applications for the replanting scheme came fromprivate oil palm plantations, 29% from government agencies operationplantations and 14% from individual smallholders.