Don't take your wives with you: Tunky

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)