InfoSAWIT, JAKARTA –The government claimed that India still imports crude palm oil (CPO) from Indonesia to fulfill its needs.

Secretary of External Affairs, Retno Marsudi said, it was mentioned by the Embassador of India to Indonesia, Pradeep Kumar Rawat after giving the documents from his country to President Joko Widodo.

In the conversation, India still imports CPO from Indonesia. In addtion, the import volume from Indonesia is bigger than it from Malaysia.

For information, India, at least, imported 9 million metric tons of CPO in 2016. Based on Indonesian Palm Oil Association (IPOA), the CPO exports from Indonesia to India reached 5,78 million metric tons in the same time. It means, 64,22 percent of the CPO imports of India were from Indonesia.

“They told us that India is the biggest CPO importer country. It needs CPO from Indonesia,” she recently said in the complex of President Office,as quoted fromCNN Indonesia.

But both countries did not discuss about the CPO import tarif that India increased twice. Days before, the country increased CPO import about 15% from the previous, 7,5 %.

She thought, the CPO was one topic to discuss with the Embassador. Two others were energy and agriculture that President Joko Widodo discussed when visiting India some time ago. “We did not discuss it in detail about the import tax. But they commit to CPO import,” she said.(T3)