So, what would be the incentive for a downstream industry like palm oil?
Hopefully, palm oil exports will no longer be in crude form, but in finished products. There will be a quota to meet the needs of domestic production. I will ask the Finance Minister to give tax incentives to suppliers of palm oil to the processing industries and to penalize exporters who go beyond their quotas. If we dont do this, the palm oil industry will never grow. Have there been any interested takers? A few weeks ago, I accompanied the President to Malaysia. Over there, I spoke with the CEO of Sime Darby (one of the biggest palm oil companies in the worldEd.), Ahmad Zubir bin Murshidp. They have 300,000 hectares of plantation in Indonesia. I told him he could no longer expand the plantations, but he can build a palm oil processing factory and that we would provide him with all the facilities he needed. He was interested. What are the other priority sectors? The sugar industry will be expanded. The problem with sugar is that to meet demands for refined sugar, almost 90 percent of
