TEMPO.CO, Jakarta-The Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries invites entrepreneurs to invest in developing seaweed as one of Indonesia's marine commodities.
"We will increase the cultivation budget to up to Rp330 billion next year specifically for seaweed," Maritime and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti said in a press conference in Jakarta, Friday, October 10.
According to Susi, that is a significant increase from this year's seaweed industry budget of around Rp40 billion.
The minister reminded that Indonesia has up to 555 species of seaweed that can be turned into a variety of products.
Not to mention, she said, the country has 12.1 million hectares of land available for the development of seaweed, yet only about 350,000 hectares have been used.
She wants seaweed producers to be able to invest in building seaweed processing plants, since the KKP is also planning to build 10 seaweed factories beginning next year.
Seaweed cultivation, she added, can improve the living standards of people residing in coastal areas in many parts of Indonesia.
Earlier, seaweed producers who are members of the Indonesian Seaweed Association (ARLI) said it would be difficult to achieve downstream success in the sector as there is no common understanding between government institutions on seaweed knowledge in the upstream and downstream industries.
"As industry actors we are left confused by how often government officials change; leading to too frequent knowledge updates. Quite often, policies released by authorities become less precise," ARLI chairman Safari Azis said.
Boosting the national seaweed industry—particularly to make downstream programs work—requires vision, mission, and the common knowledge about seaweed. That way, the downstream concept can be developed into something mature.
He lamented on the many wrong conception that seaweed can be turned into 500 products. What's true is that seaweed can be used as raw ingredients for 500 products.
The lack of understanding about seaweed among government officials, he said, sometimes lead to wring information that only produces unclear policies.
The fact of the matter is, to make downstream programs successful the industry needs a clear roadmap that can be used as reference by all stakeholder, which will allow said programs to run consistently.
BISNIS | RR
