October 18
Production of palm oil declines in Myanmar because of the outbreak of COVID-19 and climate change. The cost of importing palm oil to Myanmar is also on the increase while the forex rate is also up.
Myanmar people need to reduce oil consumption because of hazards to health and high prices based on the forex rate. So, efficient consumption of edible oil cuts the cost as well as prevents hazardous health conditions.
In Myanmar, local farmers grow edible oil crops on eight million acres of land but the product of oil crops cannot meet the local demand. Insufficient volume of edible oil becomes a push to import the palm oil from the foreign market, spending a large sum of foreign exchange.
Some 800,000 tonnes of palm oil were imported due to domestic demand from 1 October 2020 to 17 September 2021 in the 2020-21 financial year. Prices of palm oil increase in the world. So, the cost of importing palm oil to Myanmar was also on the increase.
The Ministry of Commerce stated that 768,000 tonnes of palm oil were imported in 2017-18 financial year, 370,000 tonnes in the mini-budget of 2018, 855,000 tonnes in 2018-19 financial year and 888,000 tonnes in 2019-20 financial year. This fiscal year, some 790,000 tonnes of palm oil was imported from 1 October 2020 to 17 September 2021.
Myanmar needs some 1 million tonnes of palm oil per year. The entire people of the nation consume some 600,000 tonnes of cooking oil per year while restaurants, hotels, foodstuff industries and fried industries use the rest.
The consumption rate of edible oil is terrible. Everybody needs to take care of their health conditions not to face the dangerous diseases triggered by the impacts of edible oil, especially palm oil. They need to save their life in time based on reduction of oil consumption as part of curing diseases at inner body organs and thriftiness of finance.
The people will have the chance to spend their income on any other sectors because of reducing the oil consumption as part of systematic management of their incomes. If so, they can avoid suffering from diseases such as cardiac, obesity and diabetes. As such, self-control of oil consumption will help the nation reduce the import of edible oil abroad and manage the spending of their incomes necessarily. GNLM
