Agricom.id, JAKARTA – The total exports of Indonesia in June 2020 increased to May 2020. Based on the sectors, the agriculture exports consistently showed the monthly or year of year (YoY) progress.

This showed that though corona virus (Covid-19) still hits around the world, the agriculture of Indonesia develops consistently and positively.

According to Head of Public Relation and Information Bureau, Ministry of Agriculture, Kuntoro Boga Andri, this achievement should be well maintained and increased by making competition maps (comparative superiority) of the agriculture products from Indonesia, identifying the products from competitor countries to our products.

“The result of focus group discussion (FGD) Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT) and Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippine East ASEAN Growth (BIMP-EAGA) held by our officers in foreign cooperation bureau, Monday (13/7/2020) showed that the plantation sub sector commodity, such as, essential oil, betel nut, cotton, cheesy, cocoa, are potential to be sold in Philippine. Our coconut in Thailand could compete with the coconut from Vietnam,” he said.

He also explained that the agriculture trade of Indonesia with the partners in IMT-GT and BIMP-EAGA was in surplus still.

Based on central bureau of statistic (CBS), the exports from Indonesia in June 2020 reached US$ 12,03 billion. This increased 15,09% compared to May 2020 which reached US$ 10,53 billion.

Head of CBS, Suhariyato said that this is good progress. “The agriculture commodities which have the big roles in the exports were coffee, aromatic medicinal plants, spices, cocoa, and swift nest,” he said.

He also hoped that in the future, the exports from Indonesia could be better and should not be in June only but also for the next years to come. He also told that other sectors could imitate the agriculture sector which keeps increasing.

To answer the hope, besides mapping the competition and identifying the competitors’ products that ministry of agriculture has done, the professor of Economy, Institut Pertanian Bogor (IPB), Prof. Muhammad Firdaus said that the main strategy to do is to increase the infrastructure.

“Infrastructure is the basic thing to minimize the logistic costs which could encourage the product competition from Indonesia. To increase the competition, it could be done by controlling the quality and quantity of production, diversifying the products namely for the additional value, increasing the capacity of the stakeholders, especially the micro and small business, implementing the 4.0 industrial revolution, and advantaging the e-commerce,” he said.

To increase the competitive superiority in agricultural commodity from Indonesia, he also encouraged ministry of trade to be more accelerative by increasing the roles of diplomacy in the trade agreement to the exporter countries. (A2)