EU discriminates against Indonesia's fish products: Minister

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sun, 01/03/2010 9:06 AM

Minister of Fishery and Maritime Affairs Fadel Muhammad revealed that the European Union had discriminated against Indonesia's exports of fishery products by imposing higher import tariffs, Antara reported on Sunday.

"Indonesia's fishery exports to European Union have been charged with 9.5 percent import duty, but they do not impose any import duty for exports from Vietnam. This is injustice," Fadel said in a meeting with the Association of Indonesian Long-line Tuna Producers (ATLI) in Denpasar on Saturday night.

He said the government would try to break the exports barriers in a number of countries, including in the European Union, to make Indonesia's exports of fish products more competitive.

Fadel noted that eliminating such export barriers is important to achieve his ministry's target of making Indonesia the largest exporter of fishery products by 2015.

Meanwhile, Dedy Sutisna, a director general at the Fishery and Maritime Affairs Ministry, said that Indonesia, as a member of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) had the obligation to pay an annual fee of Rp 2 billion (around US$200,000).

However, the Foreign Ministry was often late in paying that fee, Dedy said, causing Indonesia unable to attend some of IOTC meetings.

Dedy suggested that in the future, businesspeople in the fishery sector need to bear some of the cost so that Indonesia can make an active contribution to IOTC and thus boost the country’s exports of fishery products.