INDONESIA PONDERS PALM OIL COUNTERTRADE WITH CHINA
JAKARTA, March 14 (Reuters) - Indonesia is considering a countertradearrangement with China to swap crude palm oil for development of railwaylines on the main island of Java, a senior government official said onThursday.Sudar S.A., director-general of exports, said Indonesia was looking toswap 400,000 tonnes of crude palm oil worth some $162 million in returnfor a Chinese company developing the railways."The value (of the proposed swap) is determined by the need of PT KAI(Indonesia's Railway Company) to build double (train) tracks estimated tocost around $162 million," Sudar told reporters.Sudar added that if finalised the project would take up to seven yearsto complete. He gave no further details.Indonesia is the world's second largest producer of crude palm oilafter Malaysia.In a further development, the director-general said Indonesia plannedto build palm oil storage facilities in China in a bid to increase itsmarket share."Storage facilities will be developed in Tianjin but we still don'tknow the capacity," Sudar said.China recently announced it would allow the import of up to 2.4 milliontonnes of palm oil this year against 1.4 million tonnes last year.