Agricom.id, JAKARTA - Ministry of Agriculture keeps doing everything to increase the trade balance through the exports. It is one way to minimize the trade balance deficit nationally. Besides restrict the import, ministry of agriculture also encourages and supports the businessmen and entrepreneurs to succeed the Gerakan Tiga Kali Ekspor (Gratieks).

Head of Public Information and Relation, Ministry of Agriculture, Kuntoro Boga Andri said that the investment license and exports should be easier to get and encouraged for the both would directly have influences to the people’s interests and economy.

“The imports would be if there are urgent needs and the country could not afford and should be in tight restriction. In the reverse, it needs to support the exports, it needs to have easier license and be done when we have surplus production or surpassed the people’s needs,” he said, Thursday (20/2/2020), as in the official statement to Agricom.id.

In the Gratieks, he continued, ministry of agriculture keeps encouraging the agriculture commodity to increase significantly within the supports from every stakeholder in agriculture. It needs encouragement to take the risks within the extraordinary and clever work. This would be the way for the agriculture in Indonesia to be better, more independent, and modern.

"Gratieks should be the moment to unite every power from the agriculture stakeholder from the upstream to downstream. This should increase the quality and quantity of the production so that ours would be ready to exports,” he said.

Referring to the Central Bureau of Statistic (CBS), the export volume and nominal of the agriculture products from Indonesia in November - December 2019 significantly increased reaching 8,66 percent and 10,90 percent.

In the period the trade balance of agriculture products increased reaching 34,72 percent, compared to 2018.

"In the early of this year, the agriculture sector hit the highest too (year on year/YOY) of the other sectors. CBS noted that the exports of agricultural products in January 2020 increased 4,54 percent than those in the previous year," he said.

He also thought that everything – the increasing export and the trade surplus in agriculture in the last several months happened for support from Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo.

"Minister Syahrul keeps supporting to minimize the imports but increase the exports. By making exports, the farmers’ income would increase by itself,” he said.

This also influenced to the increasing balance of trade of the agricultural commodity. It even hit 34,72 percent or US$ 1,95  billion from 2018 which reached US$ 1,44 billion.

On the other hand, BoT of agricultural products were in surplus significantly which reached 24,52 percent in December 2019, or increased 61,45 percent from October 2019.

"The success of the increasing agricultural exports could be seen from the positive balance of trade in agriculture sector,” he said. (A2)