Trade Minister Lutfi Says There Are Various Trade Challenges This Year, Conditions In The US And China Are A Concern

JAKARTA - The Minister of Trade (Mendag) Muhammad Lutfi said there are various challenges that need to be watched out for in trade in 2022. Among them are logistics to the energy crisis. These challenges will affect non-oil and gas exports.

Based on data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), the two major contributors to non-oil and gas exports are coal and processed products of crude palm oil or CPO. Each of these commodities has an export value of 32.84 billion US dollars and 32.83 billion US dollars.

Lutfi said the significant increase in Indonesia's exports over the last year could not be separated from the large growth in global demand. Including various stimulus issued by the government, it also encourages people's purchasing power. However, this has not been followed by a balanced increase in the supply of goods.

For example, said Lutfi, in the United States inflation has reached 6 percent. According to him, this is quite a headache for the American government, because inflation is high but there are no goods.

"In the United States inflation is approaching 6 percent, with high inflation growth but goods are not available because of logistical problems. So, like President Xi Jinping just made a statement saying that don't let tapering happen (too fast), because that is the same as hurts the world economy," he said at a virtual 'Trade Outlook 2022' press conference, Tuesday, January 18.

Then, continued Lutfi, the next challenge for world trade is the risk of a continuing energy crisis. He said, rising energy prices could disrupt economic growth.

"The energy crisis has already occurred in Indonesia in early 2021, this is because there is a shortage of coal causing a stumbling block rather than economic growth that disrupts our exports. So this can happen not only in Indonesia but also in other countries which causes the world economy to fall. ," he said.

Furthermore, said Lutfi, the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lutfi said, Indonesia could develop strategies to overcome these health challenges. Lutfi explained that despite the many trade measures that were taking place, overall trade was growing well and healthy.

"Therefore, we must be at the forefront, now Indonesia is well-known as a resilience producer because we consider it very good. Not closing off exports has caused Indonesia to become a destination country for ordering their products," he said.

Lutfi ensured that the government continues to prepare mitigations to deal with these problems. Regarding obstacles in the form of container scarcity and shipping costs, Lutfi said the situation tends to be better and not as bad as in the second and third quarters of last year.

On the same occasion, General Chairperson of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) Arsjad Rasjid said that logistical problems are still an export obstacle that must be resolved.

Therefore, Arsjad said the Government needed to provide short, medium and long term solutions to resolve these logistical problems.

"What is needed now is with stakeholders how to reduce the burden of rising logistics costs. One of them is by doing joint exports to reduce logistics costs," he said.