Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Tuesday he would not retract his criticism of New Delhi\u2019s actions in Kashmir even though Indian traders have urged a boycott of Malaysian palm oil.<\/p>\n
“We speak our minds, and we don’t retract or change,” Mahathir told reporters outside parliament on Tuesday. “What we are saying is we should all abide by resolutions of the [United Nations]. Otherwise, what is the use of the UN?”<\/p>\n
Mahathir described \u00a0boycott by Indian traders as a trade war between the world\u2019s second biggest producer and exporter of the commodity and its biggest buyer so far this year.<\/p>\n
Mahathir said Malaysia would study the impact of the boycott called by the Mumbai-based Solvent Extractors\u2019 Association of India and look at ways to address the issue.<\/p>\n
New Delhi has so far refused to comment on the trade spat.<\/p>\n
This is not the Indian government, so we have to find out how we can communicate with these people, because trade is a two-way thing and it is bad to have what amounts to a trade war, Mahathir said.<\/p>\n
In a separate statement, Malaysia\u2019s Primary Industries Minister Teresa Kok said the country viewed the call for a boycott with great concern.<\/p>\n
I urge (the Solvent Extractors\u2019 Association of India) to not take such decisions unilaterally and allow both governments to resolve the current situation, Kok said.<\/p>\n
Malaysia\u2019s exports to India were worth $10.8 billion in the fiscal year through March 31, while imports totalled $6.4 billion, according to Indian government data.<\/p>\n
India was Malaysia\u2019s third-largest export destination in 2018 for palm oil and palm-based products worth 6.84 billion ringgit ($1.63 billion).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Tuesday he would not retract his criticism of New Delhi\u2019s actions in Kashmir even though Indian traders have urged a boycott of Malaysian palm oil. “We speak our minds, and we don’t retract or change,” Mahathir told reporters outside parliament on Tuesday. “What we are saying is we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":11066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,31,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india","category-news","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11064"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11067,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11064\/revisions\/11067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}