I

ndonesia is looking to penetrate the Myanmar fertilizer market, which has millions of hectares of paddy fields with '€œlow yields and a lack of fertilizing efforts'€, a senior official says.

Deputy Agriculture Minister Rusman Heriawan said the ministry had encouraged local fertilizer manufacturers to expand to the neighboring country'€™s market.

'€œIndonesia'€™s agriculture-related industry has rapidly advanced, and it'€™s time for us to look for a better market out there. Our neighboring country Myanmar has a promising market as they have millions of hectares of rice fields and good quality water for irrigation, with low yields due to poor fertilization,'€ he said on Monday.

The neighboring country, according to him, produces an average 2 to 2.5 tons of rice per hectare, or less than a half of Indonesia'€™s rice production that can reach 7 to 8 tons per hectare.

Rusman said state-owned fertilizer company PT Pupuk Indonesia Holding Company (PIHC), through its subsidiaries PT Pupuk Sriwijaya and PT Pupuk Kujang, had started to plow the country'€™s market to survey the potential, and was expected to secure a contract after one planting period for approximately three months.

'€œShould things go well, we want our state-owned companies to not only sell fertilizer but also manage their own plots of land in that country,'€ he said.

PIHC marketing director Kushartono said his company had sold 40,000 tons of urea fertilizer in the country since March.

'€œWe have targeted to sell 180,000 tons of fertilizer to Myanmar [by the end of] this year. We expect to also sell NPK [nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium] fertilizer one day,'€ he told The Jakarta Post.

The company has cooperated with the Myanmar Agriculture Public Cooperation (MAPCO) '€” an agriculture cooperative that buys rice and distributes fertilizer in the country.

He added that the company had also launched demo plots in four areas in the country to introduce its product, and expected to see the results in three months.

Kushantoro said Myanmar, with a total of 12.6 million hectares of paddy fields and a 62.3 million population, was a promising market for the company to expand.

PIHC has targeted to export around 20 percent or 1 million tons of its 2013 estimated production of 5.1 million tons, while the rest will be allocated to meet domestic needs.

The target is a 42.86 increase compared to the company'€™s exports last year of 700,000 tons of fertilizer to around 20 countries, including the US and Australia.

Despite planning to boost fertilizer exports, Indonesia still has a deficit in its fertilizer trade, attributed to the low gas supply needed to compose the commodity.

Indonesia'€™s fertilizer exports reached US$549.4 million, a 36.31 increase compared to the 2011 exports of $433 million, according to data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) and the Trade Ministry.

Indonesia, among the world'€™s biggest urea fertilizer producer after Middle Eastern countries and China, exported 1.09 million tons of urea fertilizer worth $482.75 million last year, or 87.87 percent of 2012'€™s total exports.

Indonesia, however, imported $2.62 billion of fertilizer last year, or a 13 increase compared to $2.59 billion in the previous year, with potassium chloride fertilizer making the sheer cake of 47 percent of the total import.