INDONESIA, the world’s second largest rubber producer (after Thailand), urges the international community at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum to include rubber as well as palm oil (CPO) and its derivative products in the APEC Environmental Goods List (EG List), on the premise that these products are environmentally-friendly.
Being included on the list means a 5% import duties cut on these products.
At the APEC ministerial meeting in Surabaya (East Java) in April, Indonesia was unable to include these products on the list, which to date has 54 items that are labelled environmentally-friendly.
In recent years, Europe and US have launched campaigns against palm oil; the move have had adversely impacted Indonesian exports of crude palm oil.
The campaign had criticised the expansion of palm oil plantations through illegal logging, which was nixed by the Indonesian government, assering that the domestic palm oil and rubber industries are now akin to sustainability.