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Indonesia to diversify beef import sources
The Trade Ministry is looking at the possibility of importing beef, either in the form of live cattle or carcasses, from countries other than Australia to help stabilize beef prices in the market and reduce dependence on a single country
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he Trade Ministry is looking at the possibility of importing beef, either in the form of live cattle or carcasses, from countries other than Australia to help stabilize beef prices in the market and reduce dependence on a single country.
Trade Ministry inspector general Karyanto Suprih said on Thursday that the ministry was currently planning to find alternative countries to import beef from.
'We're going to look at all possibilities to cut dependence on a single country,' he told The Jakarta Post.
Indonesia has become the largest importer of Australian live cattle, with total imports standing at 365,480 head of cattle as of June or more than half of Australia's total live cattle exports, surpassing imports from Vietnam and China, according to data from Meat and Livestock Australia.
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'We'll check the prices first. There are some countries that are expected to offer more competitive prices than Australia.'
Indonesia is, meanwhile, the fifth-largest importer of Australian beef, with total imports hitting 20,908 tons in the January to July period of this year, the data show.
Meanwhile, beef prices surged to at around Rp 108,540 (US$7.60) per kilogram on Thursday, partly driven by supply shortages.
Karyanto said that India, South Korea and the Philippines were among countries prepared to supply beef to Indonesia.
He said, however, that his ministry had not decided yet which country it would turn to, as factors like price and hygiene had to be taken first into account.
'We'll check the prices first. There are some countries that are expected to offer more competitive prices than Australia,' he said.
The government was also currently planning to revise a law to enable imports of beef and live cattle from more countries, he added.
The government is planning to revise a law that requires livestock be imported only from countries that have secured disease-free status from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), known by its French abbreviation OIE.
With the revision, importers would be able to import livestock from zones that have received disease-free clearance regardless of the hygiene status of the country as a whole.
As part of the government's policy package to boost the country's economic growth, the Trade Ministry is aiming to relax a number of regulations.
'We have already intensively discussed the simplification of a number of regulations in the last seven weeks, so I'm upbeat that we can start deregulating soon,' Karyanto said.
Indonesian Meat Importers Association (Aspidi) executive director Thomas Sembiring, however, gave a lukewarm response to the government's plan, saying that a previous similar proposal from Aspidi had been rejected by the government.
'We previously proposed Uruguay, but heard nothing back [from the ministry],' he said.
Uruguay, according to Thomas, offers beef at a relatively competitive price with similar hygiene standards to Australia.
Uruguay exported a total of 102,154 tons of beef last year, with the main buyers including China and member countries of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), according to Uruguay's National Meat Institute.
