VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Indonesian Trade Minister, Agus Suparmanto explained the marketing strategy so that businesspeople can survive and penetrate the export market amid Covid-19 pandemic in the 8th Annual Jakarta Marketing Week 2020 virtually on Sunday (Sept/20).

In the short-term, the Trade Ministry focuses on export development for products which experienced positive growth during the pandemic namely processed food and beverages, medical equipment, agricultural products, fishery, and agroindustry. Besides that, they also focus on new product development that emerged during pandemic such as pharmaceutical and new export products resulting from industry relocation from some countries to Indonesia.

Meanwhile, for market approach, Indonesian Trade Ministry will implement export market development strategy which is adjusted to each export destination country's condition during Covid-19 handling. Minister Agus Suparmanto said, for now and until one year ahead, Indonesia will focus on countries that had or beginning to recover such as Australia, New Zealand, England, Germany, Italy, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Algeria, Canada, and Mexico.

For medium-term, the Trade Ministry is studying products with market power in accreditation countries of the trade representatives and classifying them in three categories. Firstly is excellent products, namely products with market power in export destination countries. Secondly is emerging products, those with increasing export trends in the last five years. Then, thirdly is losing products, namely products with decreasing export trends in the last five years.

The Trade Minister also explained that Indonesia will join one of the biggest exhibitions in the world namely Dubai Expo 2020 in the United Arab Emirates with the theme "Connecting Minds, Creating the Future." Indonesia's participation was also an attempt to increase Indonesia's image in the world. This event was initially scheduled on October 20, 2020 to April 10, 2021. However, because of the pandemic, it changed into October 1 2021 - March 31 2021. He said that the Indonesian Pavilion will present the concept of Golden Indonesia 2045.

In his explanation, the Trade Minister also invited the businesspeople to join the Trade Expo Indonesia - Virtual Exhibition 2020 (TEI-VE) 2020. This event will be held on November 10-16, 2020. TEI-VE is an effort of the Trade Ministry to boost Indonesian export and to answer the Covid-19 challenges. TEI-VE 2020 also aimed to restore Indonesian economy through export promotion amid Covid-19 pandemic. It was expected that 200-300 participants, including from the export-oriented small medium enterprises will join the TEI-VE 2020.

In the same opportunity, Trade Minister Agus Suparmanto also explained about Indonesian export performance. In January-August 2020, Indonesian export was 103.15 billion US$.

The export performance was surplus 11.05 billion US$, or better than the same period last year which was deficit 2.06 billion US$. The export destinations were still dominated by China, the United States, European Union, Japan, India, Singapore, and Malaysia.