Chairman of the National Horticulture Council Benny Kusbini protested that the new Ministry of Agriculture regulations regarding the import of horticulture products saying that the policy would only create economic high cost.
Benny said that under the new policy on the supervision of food security, every container of imported fruits and vegetables will have to undergo inspection by the Ministry of Agriculture’s Quarantine Agency.
He said that this would be costly, as the cost of inspection per container is around Rp 6 billion. Previously, inspection of imported horticulture products was only done on samples.
Benny was quoted by Bisnis Indonesia on Monday as saying that assuming the country imports about 15,000 containers of horticulture products per month, the inspection cost would total about Rp 90 billion per month.
Under the new regulation, the government has also cut down the number of entry ports for imported horticulture products to four from eight previously. The four entry ports include the Belawan Port in North Sumatra, Makassar Port in South Sulawesi, Tanjung Perak in Surabaya, and the Soekarno-Hatta Airport in Banten. The new policy would be effective as of March 2012.
Benny said that shrinking the number of entry ports would increase the cost of loading and unloading activities as there would be queuing. At the main Tanjung Priok Port alone, it takes about 2 days for a ship to load or unload goods. Vessels queuing at ports would have to spend another Rp 1.5 trillion per day of waiting.
Benny explained that the new government policies to tighten the import of horticulture products would only create a high economic cost, which eventually would have to be shouldered by consumers.
He said that the government should focus on improving the productivity of local horticulture products including their quality and deals with the various inefficiencies in the domestic economic system to help local products more competitive than imported products. (rei)
