Plantation owners willing to foot COVID-19 quarantine charges - MPOA

“We are willing to pay for the quarantine charges and we will adhere to all the standard operating procedures (SOPs) to be introduced by the government.

“But please allow all workers that went back on leave to be allowed to return back here,” its chief executive Datuk Mohd Nageeb Abdul Wahab said recently on TV3’s Money Matters talk show.

He said the association is proposing three items in its 2021 budget wishlist, to safeguard the wellbeing of the oil palm industry as well as the almost one million smallholders, at the same time improving the country’s revenue from the agriculture sector.

He was reported previously saying that the industry, pre-COVID was already facing a shortage of 36,000 workers.

Malaysia, the world’s second largest palm oil producer, relies on workers from countries such as Indonesia and Bangladesh as they accounted for 84 per cent of its plantation workforce.

When the pandemic struck and borders began to close, thousands of foreign workers left the palm oil estates to return to their respective countries. MPOA said it had not been able to replace those who had left.

As for the second wish, MPOA wants the government to unfreeze the recruitment of foreign labour, saying that the decision to ban such workers could lead to the demise of the industry.

“The industry requires more people, namely for the harvesting operation. With the current CPO price trading almost RM3,000 per tonne, if we are not employing, what are we getting?”

The third wish he said, is for the government to give double taxation relief for all who implement mechanisation in the industry.

Meanwhile, Mohd Nageeb said when asked on the CPO average price for the remaining of 2020, that the commodity would be trading between RM2,500 and RM2,600 per tonne as compared to last year’s RM2,000 per tonne.

“The CPO price has been reasonably good this year and comparing with last year, the increase is quite significant.. and moving into the first half next year, price gurus are even more bullish for CPO as they expect La Nina will occur, hence reducing the crop production.

“So it’s not all doom and gloom for the palm oil industry,” he added.

MPOA has 122 members, including large local plantation companies such as IOI Corp, Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd, Sime Darby Plantation and FGV Holdings Bhd.

The industry produces about 20 million tonnes of palm oil annually, which accounts for 28 per cent of the world’s supply of palm oil, and has consistently contributed about five per cent to the country’s gross domestic product.

The industry is also the second biggest employer after the government, requiring a workforce of about 750,000. In 2019, its revenue stood at RM65 billion.