March 19, 2001 (Bernama) - PALM OIL will begin replacing diesel atpower stations and factories in Malaysia from this week, said PrimaryIndustries Minister Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik.Three Tenaga Nasional Bhd power stations in Pasir Gudang in Johor, PortKlang, and Prai in Penang would take the lead and opt for palm oil, hesaid."Some 400,000 tonnes of palm oil are expected to be used by the threepower stations this year and will thus reduce the current excess palm oilstockpile which has contributed to the lower price,'' Lim said at adialogue with some 100 smallholders in Sungkai, Perak, last Thursday.This move was part of the government's efforts to raise the price of palmoil from the current level of around RM800 per tonne, he said.Lim said that to further stabilise the price of palm oil in the worldmarket, Malaysia would co-operate with Indonesia in research anddevelopment to come up with high quality palm oil.He said a joint delegation from Malaysia and Indonesia would visit Chinaon April 9 and 10 and India from April 11 to 13 to persuade the twocountries to buy more palm oil from the two Asean members.The delegation would ask India to reduce the import tariffs on palm oilfrom 75% to 45%, similar to the tariff for soya oil."The lower tariff gives the edge to soya oil and so we will be asking forthe same tariff for palm oil,'' Lim said.He also said the government would allocate RM350mil to provide loans tosmallholders to replant their moribund palm trees, and provide US$500mil(RM1.9bil) credit to palm oil exporters by removing the export duty on onemillion tonnes of palm oil, as well as use the commodity in barter tradewith other countries.These measures were also aimed at raising the price of palm oil, headded.--Bernama