Good Chance for Indonesia to Raise Cacao Exports to Switzerland

A chocolate made only with Swiss ingredients, called "Selection Masoala", is pictured next to a cacao fruit at Zurich zoo September 29, 2010. The new chocolate creation is made only with Swiss produced ingredients that includes cacao fruit coming from the 11,000 square metres Zurich zoo artificial rainforest.

Banjarmasin, Indonesia (News Today) - Indonesia has a big opportunity to boost its cacao exports to Switzerland provided it could increase the quality of the cocoa raw material. This was stated by Minister Counsellor for economic affairs of the Indonesian embassy in Bern Taufiq Rodhy here when meeting South Kalimantan Governor Rudy Ariffin on Wednesday.

He said Indonesia is the world’s third biggest cacao producer, but unfortunately the growers have yet to be able to increase the quality of their product. In this case, he said, Switzerland as the biggest cacao producer has not much imported cacao from Indonesia.

"Switzerland is the world’s biggest cocoa producer, but it does not raise any cacao crops in that country, causing it to be highly dependent on other countries," he said.

This, Taufiq said, provides a big opportunity for Indonesia to increase its cacao exports to Switzerland, provided certain conditions had been met including processing, sanitation and others. He said Switzerland is a country very strict in processing the product, including the care of the producers of the environment.

"If we wish to send goods to that country, normally they will check how the product is being processed including the care of the producers of environmental matters," he said.

Indonesia’s cocoa exports to Switzerland reached only 200 million Swiss francs. The volume and value of the exports, he said, were still relatively small compared to the potential Indonesia actually has.

Indonesia’s exports to that country Rudy said are fifth compared to other countries like Vietnam whose exports had reached 2.1 billion Swiss francs. Thus, he said, now the Indonesian embassy in Bern has been trying hard to raise the volume and value of Indonesia’s exports to the Swiss market, by among other things increasing Indonesian trade, tourism and investment.

Source : kompas

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