Megawati awards best performing exporters

Arya Abhiseka, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

President Megawati Soekarnoputri awarded on Friday the Primaniyarta service medal to 34 companies assessed as the best performing exporters last year, praising them for their contribution to the national economy despite the difficult business climate.

The 34 exporters were selected from among 3,067 exporting companies throughout the country by a team of analysts, representatives of business associations and several ministries.

"I am greatly impressed with your hard work to steadily expand your markets and diversify your export goods at this difficult time," the President said when awarding the service medals.

Megawati acknowledged the climate at present was not highly conducive for doing business due to a lack of legal certainty, bureaucratic red tape and other problems inherent in the transition from a centralized government to regional autonomy.

The President said the government had done its best to make things easier for business operations but the overall condition was still worse than businesspeople had expected.

She called on the business community to improve cooperation and communication with the government to face the challenges the nation faced in the current transition to reshape its national life.

"By steadily diversifying your export markets and export commodities, you have contributed greatly to the national economy," she added.

The President praised businesspeople's great contribution to the creation of employment, pointing out that jobs provide people with purchasing power to fuel consumer demand and production.

Consumer demand has been the main locomotive of Indonesia's economy since 1998.

Minister of Industry and Trade Rini M. Soewandi urged exporters not to be complacent with the traditional export markets but be aggressive in seeking new markets.

"Our non-oil exports last year expanded only by around 2.5 percent, lower than their target of 3 percent," Rini said.

Rini was, however, optimistic about achieving the 5 percent growth set for non-oil exports this year.

"I know that is a tall order, but with hard work and aggressive promotion, we can achieve it," she said.

The Primaniyarta award has been organized annually to promote exports and motivate companies to be more active in marketing their commodities worldwide.

Most of the exporting companies presented awards are resource- based ventures located outside Java, showing that products from natural resources remain the most competitive exports from Indonesia.

For example, PT Intibenua Perkasatama in Dumai, Riau province, was presented the award not primarily for its export sales that averaged US$380 million a year between 1997 and 2001 but due to its success in diversifying its crude palm oil-based products and expanding its export market to around 29 countries.

Intibenua, which was founded by businessman Bachtiar Karim in 1994 with a daily capacity of only 500 metric tons of palm kernel oil, at present has a daily capacity to process 1,600 tons of CPO into olein, stearine and fatty acid.

The evaluation team of the trade and industry ministry also gave it a high score for its community development programs and its contribution to absorb fresh fruit bunches from more than 120,000 hectares of state, private and smallholder oil palm plantations in Riau.

Likewise, PT Megasurya Mas in Sidoarjo, East Java, was awarded for its exceptional achievement in expanding its exports of soap and margarine to more than 60 countries in Asia and Africa, its great contribution to local community development and its high work safety record.

Other top resource-based exporters last year were PT Bintuni Minaraya fishing company in Papua, PT Antam nickel company in Southeast Sulawesi, PT Pupuk Iskandar Muda fertilizer plant in Aceh and PT Barito Pacific Timber in South Kalimantan.

The best export performance was assessed by the increase in export sales, diversification of export market and products over the past five years.

The program classifies the award into four categories of exporting companies by their size and annual turnovers: small exporter group for those with average export value ranging between US$500,000 and $5 million; the medium group with $5.1 million to $30 million; the upper medium group with $30.1 million and $70 million, and the large group with more than $70 million.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade said it would give incentives for every Primaniyarta recipient such as first option to join government foreign trade missions.