Export award criteria need revision

Export award criteria need revision

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government is being urged to revise the criteria for next
year's Primaniyarta award, an export award given to successful
exporters, because in previous years it has been awarded mainly
to Indonesia-based foreign companies instead of local companies.

Harmen Sembiring of the National Agency for Export Development
(BPEN) said on Friday that the government should revise the four
criteria in the award, which are absolute export value increase
(30 percent from the total score), relative export value increase
(30 percent), market diversification (15 percent) and product
diversification (25 percent).

Harmen suggested the percentage for the absolute export value
criteria be reduced, and the market diversification or product
diversification be given a bigger proportion because those are
the key indicators in penetrating the global market nowadays.

He also said that the scores should correspond to the level of
difficulty of penetrating each export market. European countries
and the United States have a higher level of difficulty compared
to Asian and African countries since they apply many regulations
to protect their consumers, which create difficulties for
Indonesian exporters.

Meanwhile, John Situmeang of the University of Indonesia (UI)
said the government should not measure exports only from the
point of total growth, but also from the local companies
contributing to the export value.

He said that foreign companies such as PT Samsung Electronics
Indonesia, which won the previous Primaniyarta award, only
exploited Indonesia as a plant and market site, with the side
effect of increasing Indonesia's export value.

But he expressed concern that if foreign companies one day
decided to relocate their plants outside Indonesia, severe damage
would be done to the export value.

Therefore, John said that Indonesia should encourage local
exporters, and not rely on foreign companies to boost exports.