16/06/2016 (Bernama) - A masterplan for the palm oil industry will be formed to determine its future direction and sustained growth, said Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas.

Uggah, who is also state Modernisation of Agriculture and Rural Economy Minister, said the industry was a very important one to help speed up the state development agenda, contributing RM8 billion or about nine per cent to its total export value last year.

"The masterplan will focus on three main areas. The first is to develop the industry potential and addressing its internal issues.

"Of particular importance is the need to increase its productivity through adopting Good Agriculture Practice (GAP) and greater mechanisation and automation in field operations," he said in his winding up speech for his ministry at the state legislative assembly sitting here today.

He said the next was to focus on addressing market requirements and external challenges to the industry.

Hence, Uggah said it was important for the industry to comply with the various international market requirement and environmental standards.

The third focus was to developing the industry to boost rural economy as it was essentially rural-based, he said.

He said the planted areas under oil palm had increased almost three folds from 543,400 hectares in 2005 to 1.441 million hectares last year.

"This has accounted for 25.5 per cent of the total area of 5.6 million hectares in the country," he said.

He said fresh fruit bunch (FFB) production had also increased correspondingly from 7.8 million metric ton in 2007 to 18.6 million metric ton last year, an increase by 139 per cent.

During the same period, the volume of its crude palm oil (CPO) production also increased by 126 per cent from 1.6 million metric ton to 3.7 million metric ton, he added.