Amna Awad Abdel Hameed

The Economics of Malaysian Palm Oil Production, Marketing, and Utilization

Publisher Summary The rapid growth of Malaysian palm oil industry has played an important role in the Malaysian economy. Due to the economic potential of palm oil, the Malaysian government has implemented various policies to develop the palm oil industry through promoting the palm oil upstream and downstream activities in order to increase the national income. The Malaysian oil palm plantations are mainly based on a private estate management system, government schemes, and independent smallholders. Palm oil tends to have a lower producing cost and also command lower prices than the major alternative vegetable oils. Malaysia plays an important role in the global palm oil trade as a leading exporter of the oil. The oil palm products in Malaysia are traded before and after processing. The Malaysian palm oil industry primary action is to accelerate the replanting of oil palm and improve the fresh fruit bunch yield. However, due to the world anti-palm oil campaign and the sustainable agriculture issues, the Malaysian palm oil industry urgently needs some right track solutions.

Assessing Dynamics of Palm Oil Import Demand: The Case of Six Asian Countries

ABSTRACT This article uses annual data to investigate the palm oil import demand in selected Asian countries (India, China, Japan, Bangladesh, Korea, and Pakistan) through using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique. The findings of the study show that the palm oil and substitute oils prices and the national income of the importing countries are significant determinants of palm oil demand across the six models. Other factors such as biofuel mandate, trade policies, and exchange rate also proved to be important factors affecting import demand for palm oil in some of these countries.