VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Indonesian Agriculture Ministry's Secretary General Kasdi Subagyono said the government focuses on increasing agricultural export, especially for commodities with great opportunity such as elephant foot yam and swallow's nest. Kasdi on Monday (02/08) said the government's focus is raising agricultural productivity to be exported in a greater sum. One of the strategies is opening investment opportunities in the agriculture sector for domestic and foreign business people.

According to Kasdi, the Agriculture Ministry facilitated the export by creating ease of doing business for the employers. The ministry also opened the opportunity and knowledge to manage the elephant foot yam and swallow's nest. He said the export market for swallow's nest is China. While the elephant foot yam is mostly exported to China and Japan.

Based on Agriculture Quarantine Center, Indonesian export of elephant foot yam was 14.8 thousand ton in the first half of 2021. This surpassed the year on year export value of the 2019's first semester with 2.7 thousand ton. So it increased by 160 percent. Meanwhile, the swallow's nest export has kept growing since 2015 until 200, namely starting from 800 ton in 2015 up to 1,300 ton in 2020.

Kasdi further remarked that the agriculture export in 2020 rose by 15.5 percent with 451 trillion rupiahs in value. It is greater than the previous year's  390 trillion rupiahs. According to Kasdi, the agricultural export increase was still dominated by plantation sub sectors such as palm oil.