BPJPH: 'Nearly 500,000 Food and Beverage Products Lack Halal Certificates'

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian Halal Product Assurance Agency (BPJPH) Head, M. Aqil Irham, said halal certificates have been issued for 1.1 million food and beverage products in the country.

“Based on BPS (Statistics Indonesia) data, there are 4.3 million small and medium industries in Indonesia. 47 percent of them are in the food and beverage industry, or about 1.5 million,” Aqil said in a media briefing at the Ministry of Trade office in Jakarta, on Tuesday, Dec. 19.

Of the total 1.5 million, 1,134,425 products have been certified halal, leaving the remaining 487,893 products yet to be certified. “Or about 11 percent,” he added.

According to him, the data does not include the possibility of an increase in the number of business actors who have not been recorded by the BPS.

“This is our work to welcome the mandatory halal program in 2024, especially for food and beverages,” Aqil said.

He underlined that all food and beverage products, raw materials, slaughterhouses, and slaughtering services across the archipelago must be halal-certified by October 18, 2024. “Likewise, any product that enters and is traded in Indonesian territory, such as imported goods, both raw materials and buffalo, beef, or sheep meat from Australia, India, or elsewhere, must be halal-certified,” he explained.

In order to meet this deadline, Aqil said the agency conducted mitigation efforts, such as synergizing and cooperating with various ministries or institutions. “So there is no chaos in October 2024.”

From October 2019 to December 2023, BPJPH has issued halal certificates for 3,419,649 products. Specifically, 490,561 are large-scale products, 151,754 are medium-scale products, 200,679 are small-scale products, and 2,552,520 are macro-scale products.

DEFARA DHANYA | ANTARA

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