Vice President Ma'ruf Amin Regrets Indonesia Still Imports Halal Products Worth Rp2,508 Trillion: Become A Consumer Even Though The Country Is Majority Of Muslims

Vice President Ma'ruf Amin. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - Vice President Ma'ruf Amin regrets that Indonesia still has to import halal food products to meet the needs of the Muslim community in the country.

"Let alone as a producer and as a global player, to meet domestic halal food needs, we still have to import," said the Vice President at the Nusantara Islamic Economics, Business and Finance Conference, at the Nahdlatul Ulama Islamic University (Unisnu) Jepara online, quoted from Between, Wednesday 28 July.

As a country with the largest Muslim population, Indonesia still spends quite a lot on halal products, reaching 173 billion US dollars (around Rp2,508 trillion) or 12.6 percent of the world's halal product market share.

"Indonesia is actually the largest consumer of halal products in the world, being the largest consumer compared to other Muslim-majority countries," he said.

Indonesia has not even been able to optimize the existing potential to increase the domestic halal product industry. Indonesia should be able to take advantage of this potential in the halal product industry like Malaysia, said the vice president.

"We have not been able to optimally utilize the potential like Malaysia, even Brazil with Muslim minorities, especially in establishing itself as the largest halal food producer in the world," he explained.

Referring to the 2019 Global Islamic Report, Brazil has the largest export value of halal food and beverage products in the world, reaching 5.5 billion US dollars.

Another Muslim minority country that exports the second largest halal food and beverage product in the world is Australia, with an export value of US$2.4 billion.

Under these conditions, the Vice President hopes that all relevant parties can take advantage of all the potential and increase exports of halal products, so that Indonesia can become the largest halal producer in the world.

"Therefore, the government will continue to strive to encourage the development of sharia economy and finance, including sharia business activities, both large and small scale," said the vice president.