Jakarta. Indonesia’s palm oil exports enjoyed a double-digit growth this year as of May, with an unchanged list of top buyers, according to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) data released on Tuesday.

Indonesia sold $8.90 billion worth of crude palm oil (CPO) and its derivatives to its trading partners in the first five months of 2025. 

“Our exports of CPO [and its derivative products] had surged 27.89 percent year-on-year [yoy],” BPS’s senior official Pudji Ismartini told a news conference in Jakarta.

Southeast Asia’s largest economy had exported $6.96 billion of this tropical oil over the same period in 2024. Exports are growing from a volume standpoint. Indonesia had shipped approximately 8.30 million tons of palm oil products between January and the end of May, up by 3.58 percent yoy.

Indonesia, the world's largest palm oil supplier, had been selling its palm oil at an average price of $1,076.17 per ton in January-May 2025. The price had jumped 23.56 percent yoy, as it used to average at around $870.99 per ton the year earlier, according to BPS.

“Pakistan, India, and China were the top buyers of our CPO between January and May this year,” Pudji told reporters.

Pudji did not go into details on how much CPO the three countries had purchased. However, palm oil has driven India’s contribution to Jakarta’s positive trade balance.

Indonesia’s non-oil and gas trade with India saw a $5.32 billion surplus in January-May. About $1.08 billion had come from the surplus in the animal/vegetable fat and oil trade. Palm oil falls within this category of products. The said category also added $12.44 billion to Indonesia’s positive trade balance in the non-oil and gas sector. New Delhi even became Jakarta's second-largest contributor of its non-oil and gas surplus at the time.

BPS reported that Indonesia’s annual palm oil exports usually hit the $20-billion-mark. The country’s CPO exports rose from $17.36 billion in 2020 to $26.76 billion in 2021 despite selling around 25 million tons in both years. It rose to $27.74 billion in 2022. The numbers then dropped to $22.69 billion in 2023, and further down to $20.05 billion the following year.

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