T

he Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry is pushing for wider adoption of its 99 fisheries-related national standard certifications (SNI) by small and medium enterprises (SMEs), subsidizing their application costs and providing them guidance to achieve higher standards.

The ministry'€™s fish processing and marketing director general, Saut P. Hutagalung, said that the government would provide a subsidy for auditing costs, if the SMEs wanted to certify their products.

'€œDue to the large costs that SMEs have to shoulder, we are momentarily taking over auditing fees that cost around Rp 6 to 8 million (US$493 to $657) per certificate,'€ Saut told reporters on the sidelines of a marine industry-focused SNI campaign seminar in Central Jakarta, on Thursday.

Saut said that the ministry was only able to support 10 SMEs per year, a practice that only started this year, because of budget constraints. As a workaround, he suggested that the government reallocate to this cause a portion of the state funds that were recently deducted from the fuel subsidies.

According to him, the ministry is currently spending close to Rp 80 million per year to fund the certification audit process for interested SMEs. As of 2014, 10 businesses have been through the mentorship, while another 10 are expected to receive certification by the end of the year.

'€œEvery market has minimum requirements. We are entering an age of open competition, so we want our market to also have standards,'€ Saut said.

With currently 63,000 SMEs operating in the local marine and fisheries industry, the director general said he hoped the adoption of SNIs would encourage consumers to become '€œfans'€ of locally manufactured products and stem the tide of cheap and underqualified imports.

Saut was eager to have industry players adopt the SNIs because they believed they were beneficial for their businesses.

Solihin, a small trader of tender-boned milkfish locally known as bandeng presto, claimed to have doubled the demand for his '€œCap Kapal Nelayan'€ brand ever since receiving SNI certification in 2012.

He said his revenue increased from Rp 30 million per month to around Rp 60 million after two years, increasing his output from 50 kilograms to four quintals per day. He will try to achieve a production capacity of seven tons per day.

'€œThe whole process was quite simple; I managed to get my milkfish cultivation, processing and packaging businesses certified,'€ he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Solihin, who operated in the greater Jakarta area, said he wanted to differentiate his goods from other sellers and break into the urban middle-class market, which he believed to have a preference for SNI-certified goods.

Meanwhile, the ministry was also looking for ways to simplify the marine-focused SNIs by aligning them with existing international accreditation, while updating those that had become obsolete.