Tempo Interactive, Friday, 15 January, 2010 | 18:16 WIB
TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta:Agriculture Minister Suswono has rejected Malaysia’s request that Indonesia export live calves to this country. He conveyed his rejection during a meeting with Malaysian Agriculture and Industrial Principle Minister, Nuh bin Anwar, yesterday.
“The law bans exporting cattle before domestic needs are fulfilled,” Suswono told reporters.
Suswono said Indonesia is still importing more than 350.000 live cattle every year. However, last year the Gorontalo regency government made an agreement with Malaysia concerning live cattle imports to the country. Due to the export ban, the Malaysian Agriculture Minister requested that the Indonesian government continue the exports. “What Gorontalo did was a mistake because there was no coordination with the central government,” he said.
The government, Suswono added, is studying the implications of this arbitrary agreement termination. According to Suswono, Malaysia can accept the export termination because it is against the law. “We offered them to invest and if the domestic needs are met they can import the cattle,” he said.
The Gorontalo provincial government’s spokesperson, Sudarman Samad, said the Malaysian Agriculture Minister plans to visit Gorontalo tomorrow to discuss this problem. “They want to ask why the cattle export was halted,” he said, contacted yesterday.
Samad said the decision to export cattle to Malaysia was taken when Fadel Muhammad was governor. The exports were done by province-owned enterprises together with the local livestock office.
The decision to export cattle was also endorsed by the Trade Department. The Gorontalo government decided to do the exports because it had the authority following the implementation of the regional autonomy regulation. However, Samad did not know exactly why the exports were halted, saying, “Technically, it is the state-owned enterprises and Governor Fadel who know the details.”
PT Gorontalo Fitrah Mandiri director, Halim Usman, said cattle exports from Gorontalo to Malaysia have only been done twice, in 2007 and 2008. However, in 2009, the exports were halted because the Law no. 18/2009, banning cattle exports, was enacted.
Halim admitted he learnt about export termination only today from the Agriculture Minister’s statement, even though there were prior indications that the exports were to be ended. “We arranged the export license for 2009, but the permit took a long time to be issued. Then we heard that the export license was rejected,” he said.
The Gorontalo government had in fact signed an MoU with the Malaysian government to export 20.000 cattle. However, only a few hundreds have been exported. Yet, according to Halim, the Malaysian government had spent investment funds for calves, cattle fattening, abattoir construction, and the start of a corn farm to produce animal feed.
KARTIKA CANDRA
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