“At the moment, the government is halting lobster farming outside Indonesian territory because the results of our evaluation have yet to meet expectations,” the ministry’s Aquaculture Director General TB Haeru Rahayu said on Thursday, as quoted by CNBC Indonesia.

The partnership with Vietnam, now in its second year, was initially hailed as a major step toward revitalizing Indonesia’s lobster aquaculture industry, which has long struggled to reach its potential.

Under the agreement, Vietnamese businesses requiring lobster larvae were required to conduct their farming operations in Indonesia in collaboration with local partners. The arrangement was designed to facilitate technology transfer and investment in supporting infrastructure, such as feed production, which Vietnam had already developed extensively.

Haeru explained that despite technical instruments agreed upon by both countries, the government conducts regular evaluations every three months for certain aspects, while others are assessed every six months or annually.

“Despite the memorandum of understanding [MoU], illegal BBL smuggling remains widespread,” Haeru said. “After our evaluation, we concluded that things were not going as expected, so we decided to suspend the partnership.”

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To address the issue, the government will form a special task force to combat the illicit BBL trade.

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