Promotion, collaboration sought to boost tea exports

The government should give more attention to Indonesia’s tea industry by intensifying promotional efforts and strengthening collaboration among ministries to reverse the trend of declining exports that started a few years ago, a public policy expert suggests.

“The Trade Ministry, for example, can collaborate with Pak Arief Yahya [the tourism minister]. So while traveling overseas, they could promote Indonesian teas,” University of Indonesia’s public policy lecturer Riant Nugroho said on Monday.

The declining tea exports, which was partly caused by there being limited land for tea plantations, could also be solved through better coordination with the Public Works and Public Housing (PUPR) Ministry, he added.

“Talk to them and find out ways so they won’t use all the available area to build [the planned] Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, for example,” he said, referring to the megaproject designed to better connect Jakarta and the capital of West Java, Indonesia’s largest tea-producing region.

Ranked as the seventh largest tea producer in the world, Indonesia’s tea exports dropped to 62,700 tons last year from 92,000 in 2009, with the value going down to US$128 million from $171 million in the same period.

Only 6 percent of the 62,700 tons exported last year comprised value-added processed tea.

“Tea production in the country still faces a lot of challenges, such as the limited area for plantations, outdated machinery and low tea prices at the farm level,” said the Trade Ministry’s director general for foreign trade, Dody Edward.

Among the largest of Indonesia’s tea export destinations are Russia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Australia and Germany.