GAPKI Fights for the Palm Sector at UN Forum

By : Herry Barus And Aldo Bella Putra | Saturday, September 02 2017 - 22:01 IWST

INDUSTRY.co.id - Jakarta - Indonesian Palm Oil Entrepreneurs Association (Gapki) will attend a summit on the development of the Indonesian palm oil sector in an official forum at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, USA.

Chairman Gapki Joko Supriyono is scheduled to speak on September 6, 2017 to explain the attitude and position of the business world related to sustainability issues in the country's largest foreign exchange minerals sector.

"In addition to speaking formally at the UN, we will also conduct a number of informal meetings with stakeholders during this visit to the United States," Joko said in a written statement received by media crews in Jakarta on Saturday.

The presence of Gapki at this summit at the UN is at the invitation of the UN Development Program (UNDP) which initiated discussions on sustainability issues in a number of economic sectors in developing countries.

In addition to Gapki, UNDP also invited representatives of the Government of the Republic of Indonesia in the forum. In addition to Indonesia, there are also government and business representatives from Brazil and Liberia.

Joko said with foreign exchange donation reached 18.5 billion US dollars or about Rp240 trillion, oil palm became the strategic sector of Indonesia. In addition, the palm oil sector absorbs more than five million workers and encourages economic growth of peripheral regions.

"We agree that the governance of oil palm plantations should be sustainable, and here we are sitting together at this UN, what kind of sustainability of the palm oil sector we want to achieve together," he said.

Related to land fires, Joko stressed the coordination has been done by the government and the world during this year. As a result, there are no reports of any hotspots from within the company concession. All Gapki members also helped to extinguish fires outside the company's concessions.

So far, EU and US countries have highlighted the governance of oil palm plantations in Indonesia.

However, demand for palm oil from both regions continues to increase. In the first half of 2017, exports to the EU reached 2.7 million tons, an increase of 42 percent compared to the same period of the previous year of 1.9 million tons