Don't take your wives with you: Tunky

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Industry and Trade Tunky Ariwibowo has called on senior officials in the provinces not to take their spouses with them when attending trade promotions overseas.

The minister said that priority to take part in overseas trade promotions should be given to exporters.

"The provincial administrations should closely monitor the situation because they often ask other parties to sponsor (finance) their spouses' overseas trips," the minister said in a meeting with small-scale companies in Surabaya yesterday.

The minister was quoted by Antara as saying that the provincial administrations should support the National Agency for Export Development in promoting small-scale exporters to enter the world market by sending more local exporters overseas.

"We want to promote our products in overseas markets, but the number of chances to go is very limited as is the amount of items we can take, not to mention the high traveling costs," a local furniture manufacturer complained.

She said that the government, which often talked about increasing exports, should help financially weak companies to participate in overseas trade promotions.

The government has provided a number of incentives to support financially weak companies. Many local exporters, however, said that they were reluctant to take such benefits due to the arduous procedures to get the low-interest loans and also because they were often required to pay a certain sum of money to get the facilities.

The minister told local administration offices to check out the local exporters' complaints.

"It will be a disgrace for us, if those unofficial levies affected our export program by causing unnecessary burdens on exporters," he said. (04)