PUTRAJYA (July 2): Newly-minted Minister of Primary Industries Teresa Kok said today that the ministry will focus on increasing the number of high value-added products from the downstream plantation commodities sector, as one of its four main priorities. 

Speaking to the press at the ministry today, Kok said an emphasis will be put into research and development (R&D) with commercial value, as well as those which can increase product quality and environmental sustainability. 

Kok, who is Seputeh member of parliament, was sworn in along with 13 ministers and 23 deputy ministers earlier today. 

“The function of this ministry is to ensure the continuity of commodity industries across the value chain from upstream to downstream, and that will be my priority, centreing around conservation of environment and national biodiversity,” she said. 

This, she explained, will include the palm oil sector.

“Of course, we need to recognise that the anti-palm oil campaign in the EU is something that Malaysia, as a palm oil exporter, needs to work hard to campaign against.

“[Prime Minister] Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has visited Indonesian president Jokowi [Joko Widodo]. He did invite Jokowi to join Malaysia to work together to counter this anti-palm oil campaign. 

“I think [this will need] a lot of work; we need to have some [form of] strategic communication plan to see how we can also work together with the industry players, to promote palm oil and to counter these kinds of negative campaigns against our products,” she said. 

She and deputy minister Shamsul Iskandar Mohd Akin will have several dialogs with stakeholders in the coming weeks, before narrowing down on different strategies to be implemented to achieve the said objective, Kok added.