JOHOR BAHRU: Malaysia's Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry (MOA) will help local chilli producers submit a petition to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) regarding the dumping of imported chilli into the Malaysian market.

Minister Salahuddin Ayub said on Saturday (Sep 8) that petition forms have been distributed to more than 800 producers registered with MOA to collect information and data.

 “If there is dumping issue, report it to us and we will send the report to MITI and the World Trade Organisation. It is the responsibility of the ministry if there are reports submitted by producers.

“One of the things that we can identify is the price, that imported chilli sold in Malaysia is priced cheaper than the locally produced variety, and it can be categorised as dumping,” he said.

After attending a ministry talk with chilli producers, Salahuddin spoke to the media about the drop in the price of local chilli due to the dumping of imported chillis from Vietnam, Thailand and China in the market, as reported by a local newspaper recently.

He said that despite this issue, Malaysia still needs to import chilli as the volume of local production is unable to cater to local demand.

However, when there is competition between imported and local chilli, the short-term solution should be to set the farm price of locally produced chilli at RM4 (S$1.30) to RM4.50, and to promote them to farmers’ markets, he said.

“This is the immediate step we can implement to assist (the producers) to cover their production cost,” he said.