December 19, 2022
The Director General of Agro-Industry at the Ministry of Industry (Kemenperin), Putu Juli Ardika, said that rubber commodities have an essential role in the national economy. According to data from the Ministry of Industry, the national rubber industry (upstream and downstream sectors) significantly contributes to foreign exchange earnings of US$7.1 billion, equivalent to Rp.110.69 trillion in 2021. Putu said that Indonesia is the world’s second-largest natural rubber producer, with a rubber plantation area of 3.6 million hectares (ha) and production reaching 3.03 million tons in 2021.
Putu added that the rubber industry also absorbed a direct workforce of more than 60,000 people in the upstream industrial sector, and as many as 258,000 were indirect workers, which also affected 2.5 million farmers. But on the other hand, he revealed that upstream rubber products that are further processed domestically by downstream industries are only around 20%, including the tire industry, vulcanization, dock fenders, rubber engineering goods, and so on. Meanwhile, 80% is exported in a semi-finished form of crumb rubber and ribbed smoked sheet (RSS). Therefore, Putu emphasized that the downstream policy was fundamental to increasing domestic rubber commodities’ added value.
According to Putu, through the implementation of the National Rubber Commodity Workshop some time ago, the Ministry of Industry hopes to obtain the best solution in the future to develop further a national rubber processing industry that is globally competitive. The Ministry of Industry has encouraged the increased use of natural rubber through rubber asphalt. This should also be prompted to develop of other rubber derivative products, such as bridge bearings, seismic bearings, rubber dams, conveyor belts, dock fenders, and others.
The government, continued Putu, has made a program to Increase the Use of Domestic Products (P3DN). Through the P3DN Program, the procurement of projects funded by the APBN and APBD and procurement by the BUMN sector can absorb domestic industrial products that already have TKDN. In addition, another effort that can be made is to optimize the use of domestic rubber through the Demand Promotion Scheme (DPS). This policy aims to increase the absorption of natural rubber in the country and reduce imports of finished rubber goods.
Implementation of the DPS said Putu; since 2016, the government has been developing rubber asphalt for national road infrastructure and regional roads in rubber-producing areas. However, until now, the implementation of rubber asphalt is still far from what was expected, so the impact is manageable for increasing the absorption of national natural rubber.
In fact, the government is also trying to boost the price of rubber in the country. The steps include participating in an international rubber forum involving the three main natural rubber-producing countries, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia, which are members of the International Tripartite Rubber Council (ITRC) organization. The three countries, Putu explained, had implemented an agreement to reduce exports through the Agreed Export Tonnage Scheme (AETS), which had been implemented several times. The reduction in exports is only temporary as a stimulant towards supply-demand balance, so it has a positive impact on improving natural rubber prices.***
Source: Inews.id