According to information on Theborneopost.com, the Malaysian Pepper Association (MPB) temporarily stopped buying pepper due to the full stockpile, while the capacity of the pepper processing plants has not met the seasonal demand. .
MPB has announced to suspend buying pepper from farmers since July 26. According to Larry Sng, MPB's chairman, the suspension was due to the ability of the processing centers located in Kuching, Sibu and Sarikei. still limited. While Malaysian pepper farmers are at the peak of their harvest this year.
According to Stanley Liew, MPB general manager, although announced to stop buying, but for farmers who need to sell a few quintals, we can still meet. The purchase is temporary, as we have purchased capacity at the peak of the harvest, in late June.
Mr. Stanley Liew adds, MPB has bought about 100 tons of pepper every day for the past 2 weeks. Mainly buying from local traders at high prices as prescribed.
We have bought 3 – 4 times our processing power. Therefore, we are increasing manpower to speed up processing. We are full, it takes a lot of time to process, which takes a lot of time.
The problem is, local traders have taken advantage of the suspension to buy farmers' prices. They buy from farmers at a lower price from 0.8-2 Ringit / kg (equivalent to about 5,000 – 12,000 VND) compared to MPB.
There were also some local traders who smuggled pepper from Indonesia, Vietnam and neighboring countries to sell to MPB. While MPB always buys higher prices to benefit our pepper farmers, Mr. Stanley Liew emphasized.
Currently, Malaysia has 33,767 pepper farmers, 95% of which are in Sarawak state.
MPB announced that they will buy back pepper from August 8.
MPB's suspension of buying pepper from farmers has met with a number of reactions from local government officials. They think this is work “Untimely, unacceptable” and MPB needs a backup plan.
According to MBP estimates, the pepper output in 2019 will be about 28,000 – 30,000 tons, expected to spend 50% for export.
Source English (giacaphe.vn)
