VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

The government is committed to maintaining sustainability in using clean energy in the electricity sector, especially increasing the use of renewable energy, one of which is through regulation of energy prices sourced from renewable energy.
"One principle applied by the government in energy development is sustainability," said Director General of Electricity at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) Rida Mulyana in written statement in Jakarta, Wednesday.
Rida explained, in addition to sustainability, the government has 5K principles in energy development, namely the first is availability, and the second is the quality of electricity itself.
"If electricity is sufficient but the carpet is not good, the government must ensure that people who enjoy electricity of good quality," he explained.
The next principle, added Rida, is affordability, energy prices must be affordable for all elements of society. Meanwhile, the fourth is sustainability and the last one is justice so that people throughout Indonesia can feel the same way.
To accelerate the energy transition, Rida said that soon the government will issue regulations related to new and renewable energy tariffs.
"We will issue a Presidential Regulation for renewable energy tariffs PLN would purchase, and hopefully will increase the use of EBT in Indonesia," he said.
Meanwhile, the President Director of PT. PLN (Persero) Zulkifli Zaini said to support the government's efforts to transition energy to renewable energy, PT. PLN (Persero) has created three programs aimed at accelerating the development of EBT in Indonesia.
"The first program for EBT development is in the long-term plan of PLN, which is 5 GW, which has been planned in RUPTL, and the second program is the Green Booster at 3.5 GW," he explained.
The Green Booster program includes innovations in the development of NRE including the co-firing program, the development of solar PV on ex-mining land, and the utilization of the existing dam belonging to the Ministry of PUPR.
And the third program is large scale renewable. PT PLN will develop large-scale EBT generators to improve the economy by preparing hydropower plants for industrial needs.
"We hope that the various innovations carried out by PLN can inspire all of us to innovate and find alternatives to NRE development that are more cost-efficient and have good reliability," he concluded.
Meanwhile, various series of events to commemorate National Electricity Day (HLN) 2020 organized by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources include the Energy Sustainability Society Summit on 27 October.
On November 3, there will be the operational launch of the Public Electric Vehicle Battery Exchange Station (SPBKLU) and the Awarding of Electricity Safety Award (K2) which is scheduled to be attended by the Minister of EMR Arifin Tasrif. (Antaranews)

Minister of Research and Technology / Head of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) Bambang Brodjonegoro said there will be six versions of the Red and White vaccine for handling COVID-19.

"Because using different platforms, six versions of the vaccine will appear automatically," said Bambang in a virtual press conference held at the Graha BNPB Jakarta Building, Tuesday.

The six versions of the vaccine were obtained from six domestic institutions that developed the Red and White vaccine with different platforms, namely the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Gadjah Mada University, the University of Indonesia, Airlangga University and the Bandung Institute of Technology.

The vaccine made by Eijkman with a recombinant protein subunit platform has reached over 50 percent progress from the laboratory scale and is planned for preclinical testing on animals in November 2020. LIPI develops a vaccine with a fusion recombinant protein platform.

Gadjah Mada University is developing a vaccine with a recombinant protein platform. The Bandung Institute of Technology developed a vaccine with an adenovirus platform, and Airlangga University developed a vaccine with two platforms, namely adenovirus and adeno-associated virus (AAV). 

Bambang said that the development of vaccines with various platforms is actually similar to those carried out by many foreign parties such as AstraZeneca which uses a non-replicating viral vector platform, Moderna which uses the RNA platform.

"But the most important thing is the same production, namely the COVID-19 vaccine," Bambang said.

He said the different platforms used in the development of the Red and White vaccine for COVID-19 depend on the technology mastered by each institution or researcher.

"Six institutions are working respectively, but they will eventually come out with the COVID-19 vaccine and we will facilitate its production," he said. 

Bambang said research institutions or the Ministry of Research and Technology is to produce a prototype or seed for the COVID-19 vaccine, then further development will be the responsibility of PT Bio Farma to carry out clinical trials and production of the vaccine.

Bio Farma also plans to form a consortium with private domestic companies to produce Red and White vaccines with a larger capacity. (Antaranews)

The Indonesian government, through the Ministry of Trade, continues to encourage increased exports of textile products to Turkey because the country is an important partner for the domestic textile industry to enter the global supply chain.

Secretary of the Directorate General of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Trade, Marthin Kalit, in the webinar "Exporting Indonesian Textile Products to Turkey: Challenges and Opportunities" in Jakarta, Tuesday, said the Turkish market has considerable potential for the Indonesian textile industry for two reasons.

"First, Turkey's position stretches from southeastern Europe to West Asia so that this country becomes an important hub to penetrate the Middle East and even northern Africa markets," he said.

The second reason is that Turkey is the world's main textile and garment producer. The country is the sixth-largest supplier in the world and third in Europe.

"Thus, Indonesian exporters can become suppliers of raw materials or intermediate goods so they can enter the Turkish supply value chain," he said.

Marthin revealed that artificial staple fiber was one of Indonesia's largest export products to Turkey in 2019 with a value of 366 million US dollars.

In the January-August 2020 period, the export value of Indonesian textile products to Turkey decreased by 49.79 percent yoy with a value of 168.9 million US dollars.

Unfortunately, despite its bright potential, the Turkish market is quite a challenging market. Turkey only binding 50.5 import tariffs on its imports to the WTO. Of the total tariff posts of the country, 43 percent of them are industrial products.

"This means that 49.5 percent of Turkey's tariff posts have no import duty concessions to the WTO. Thus Turkey is free to increase or decrease the import duty according to its national interests without being sued by other WTO member countries," he explained.

Since 2014, Turkey has also raised tariffs by an average of 26 percent on furniture, medical equipment, tools, metal, steel, footwear, carpets, and textiles.

They did this to protect local products and increase state revenues.

"It is not surprising that during the pandemic, Turkey activated the tariff instrument as an extraordinary policy to save their domestic industry," he said.

Apart from the tariff instrument, Turkey also applies non-tariff instruments (Non-Tariff Measures / NTM). Turkey's NTM usage ratio covers 60.74 percent of Turkey's total imports and 24.16 percent of the country's exports.

For this reason, Turkey is also in the top 10 countries in the world that have implemented the instrument the most.

"The textile sector is also one sector affected by the application of this instrument because 792 textile tariff posts have been subject to NTMs," he said.

Turkey also uses trade remedies to protect domestic industries from losses due to unhealthy trading practices. Indonesia is also on the list of countries receiving the most anti-dumping investigations.

Despite facing many challenges, Marthin said the government is aware of the potential for exports to Turkey and continues to make efforts to continue to open up opportunities for export development to the country.

The Indonesian government has also taken several approaches, including negotiating a free trade agreement with Turkey within the framework of the Indonesia Turkey Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IT-CEPA).

"In this negotiation, among others, Indonesia negotiated so that there would be no additional tariffs to be applied. Indonesia is also trying to have WTO plus treatment so that Turkey does not impose BMAD (anti-dumping duty) for too long on Indonesian export products," he explained.

Meanwhile, from the trade remedies investigation side, the Indonesian government continues to support exporters to take part and cooperate well in every investigation process.

"Although Turkey is strict in the investigation process, we are sure that if the defense effort is carried out synergistically and comprehensively at all levels, it will produce positive results," he said.

Marthin added that Indonesia had acquired paper products in 2015 and steel products in 2018 from allegations of Turkish safeguards. (antaranews)

President Joko Widodo said that the food reserves in North Sumatra would become an example for other provinces that would also build a "food estate".

This was conveyed by the President while inspecting the location of the food barn in Humbang Hasundutan, North Sumatra, Tuesday, which was monitored through a virtual live broadcast.

"This will be an example for other provinces that want to build a 'food estate'," said the President.

The President said that Indonesia has two provinces that will start the food estate program, namely North Sumatra and Central Kalimantan.

In North Sumatra alone, there are 60 thousand hectares of land available and 30 thousand hectares of which will be used for the "food estate".

The lands in North Sumatra that the government will use as food estate is scattered in several districts, namely Humbang Hasundutan Regency, North Tapanuli Regency, Central Tapanuli Regency, and Pakpak Bharat Regency. (Antaranews)