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n a bid to improve efficiencies in the country'€™s related industry sectors, two associations connected to footwear manufacturing have urged the government to stop importing beef and leather.

Instead, the associations have told the government to bring in live cattle.

The Indonesian Footwear Manufacturers'€™ Association (Aprisindo) and the Indonesian Leather Tanners Association (APKI) have demanded that the government put an end to the beef import policy.

APKI chairman Haryono Sutanto and Aprisindo secretary-general Binsar Marpaung said the government should import cattle, instead of beef and leather, for the sake of efficiency. By importing live cattle, the government would also support the leather tannery industry as well as provide raw materials to the footwear manufacturing industry at home.

They called on officials from the Agriculture Ministry and Industry Ministry to sit together and discuss replacing the beef import policy with a more efficient one.

'€œThe beef import from Australia and New Zealand has proven inefficient because it has become a source of graft among importers, government officials and certain politicians while the import of leather [also from the two countries] has created a complicated bureaucratic procedure and triggered red tape, which affects leather tanners and footwear manufacturers,'€ said Haryono.

According to him, the two ministries should learn from China and Vietnam, which have rapidly accelerated their leather and footwear industries to meet the domestic and international demand.

Indonesia set total beef import quotas for 2013 at 32,000 tons, of which approximately 20 percent consisted of prime cuts. The live cattle import quota was set at 267,000 head of cattle, according to previous reports.

For the sake of efficiency, he said, the government can import up to 1 million head of cattle (or double that figure) to meet growing demand for beef. By doing so, the government can control the beef price and help supply leather for the domestic market.

Besides Australia and New Zealand, tanners also import leather from United States and Latin America to supply as raw materials to domestic footwear companies.

Haryono also called on the Agriculture Ministry to revise a government regulation that requires all imported leather to undergo an examination at the Quarantine Center.

'€œThe imported leather will not be allowed to be taken out from the quarantine center unless importers pay for approval from veterinarians in the center,'€ he said, adding that imported leather had sometimes been kept in the center when importers were not proactive in dealing with examiners.

The regulation has been issued to prevent the transfer of mouthand-nail diseases from exporting countries.

Given the poor policies, Binsar said Indonesia could not maintain its position as the world'€™s fourth biggest footwear producer because the footwear products were less competitive compared to similar products from other countries.

Shen Rui Liang, general Manager and owner of PT Top Torch International in Bandung, West Java, producing and exporting 30,000 pairs of shoes annually, criticized the government which he said was apparently less serious in accelerating the footwear industry.

'€œThe complicated procedure of leather import has frequently caused late delivery and losses to producers, who are fined US$5 per pair of shoes for late delivery and can suffer billions of rupiah in losses for a large order,'€ he said, adding his company exported its products to Europe, through Italy.

Shen said the complicated export process and losses from late deliveries had seldom forced producers to avoid increasing their workers'€™ minimum wages or make downsizing.

Yongky Komaladi, owner of Yongky Komaladi shoe products, said the government should educate small-scale enterprises and home industries to be more productive and improve their products'€™ quality to beat the competition from foreign products.

'€œSMEs and home industries should not pose as beggars before the government but they should work hard like Chinese SMEs to beat the competition,'€ he said.

He and Binsar shared the opinion that Indonesia would be a loser in facing fierce competition from foreign producers if ASEAN economic liberalization under AFTA was implemented in 2015.