CMIC

INDONESIAN GOVERNMENT SEEKS INSTRUMENTS TO PROMOTE LOCAL COCONUT INDUSTRY The Indonesian government is exploring effective instruments to encourage domestic coconut processing industry, as official says. The Trade Ministry’s Foreign Trade Director General discovered that imposing an export duty on coconuts, for copra, would not be effective to secure its supply for the domestic industry. “We export less than 1 percent of our total outputs, or around 130 million, so an export duty would not be an appropriate solution to support the domestic processing industry,” Perhaps we need to do something else like to improve the distribution of coconuts.”he told reporters at his office. According to the Ministry’s data, Indonesia produced 16.3 billion coconuts last year, 7.6 billion of which went to the domestic industry, mostly concentrated in Riau province. Other areas with abundant coconut production are East java, North Sulawesi and North Maluku provinces, which, however, still have a small number of coconut processing centers. (http://www.thejakartapost.com/news) Source: Cocommunity, Vol.XVI No.10, 1 October 2011