U.S. cocoa quarantine costs RI producers

U.S. cocoa quarantine costs RI producers

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Cocoa Association said yesterday
that the country's cocoa exporters were likely to look for new
markets if the United States did not lift its tight inspection of
the Indonesian commodity.

The association's executive director, P.S. Siswoputranto, said
yesterday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had been
applying a policy since 1992 to automatically quarantine cocoa
imported from three countries -- Indonesia, Brazil and Malaysia
-- for pest and disease control.

He said the policy had caused a great loss to Indonesian
exporters since they had to pay for storage during the
examination process, which could take days or weeks, and a fee
for the examination.

"I think the U.S. government needs to lift the restriction
soon. Otherwise local exporters will look for other markets in
areas like Europe and Russia where the demand for Indonesian
cocoa is high and rules are less strict than in the U.S.,"
Siswoputranto said on the sideline of the U.S.-Indonesia Food and
Agriculture Forum.

He said the U.S. imposed the quarantine on the suspicion that
cocoa from Indonesia carried insects.

According to Siswoputranto, only Indonesia still faced the
restriction as Brazil had stopped exporting to the U.S. due to a
shortfall in domestic output while Malaysia also stopped
exporting cocoa because it had converted many cocoa estates into
other commodities.

The head of the agricultural office in South Sulawesi -- the
country's largest cocoa producing area -- Soewondo, recently said
the U.S. quarantine policy had inflicted at least Rp 28 billion
(about US$7.5 million) in losses on cocoa exporters from the
province.

According to the association's data, Indonesia is currently
the world's third largest cocoa producer after the Ivory Coast
and Ghana with an output of about 275,000 tons of cocoa beans a
year, or about 10 percent of the world's supply. More than 60
percent of the country's cocoa output is from South Sulawesi.

South Sulawesi exported 93,466 tons of cocoa beans to the U.S
in 1996, or 21 percent of total U.S. cocoa imports that year.

Aside from the U.S., Indonesia also exports cocoa to about 20
other countries.

Siswoputranto called on the U.S. government to replace the
automatic quarantine with a mandatory refumigation of all
Indonesian cocoa beans directly after unloading at the country's
ports to reduce the cost to Indonesian exporters.

If the cocoa was refumigated immediately after arrival -- not
after days or weeks of being stored at warehouses -- Indonesian
exporters could save warehouse costs, he said.

Siswoputranto said local cocoa exporters had applied improved
quality controls on the cocoa with assistance from the Ministry
of Agriculture to meet U.S. standards.

They always fumigated cocoa before exporting it, he said.

Also, the government was constructing two warehouses for cocoa
beans at two main cocoa outbound ports -- Ujungpandang and Medan
-- in order to further protect it from pests or disease prior to
export, he added.

"If cocoa is mixed with other commodities at warehouses prior
to shipment, chances are high that it will be infested with pests
or disease from other commodities," explained Siswuputranto.

He noted that the measures would not guarantee that the
commodity would be free of insects when it arrived in the U.S.

He said a shipment of cocoa to the U.S. took 40 days, which
was enough time for the cocoa to be infested with pests on the
ship during the trip.

In comparison, Siswoputranto said, cocoa from West Africa,
which was free from U.S. inspection, took only 10 days to reach
the U.S. by ship. The shipment period was too short a time for
pests on the ships to infest the cocoa. (jsk)