BALI - Head of the Indonesian Quarantine Agency (Barantin) Abdul Kadir Karding emphasized that quarantine not only serves to protect Indonesia's biological resources from pest and disease threats, but must also be an instrument that accelerates export and import flows.
This was conveyed by Karding when attending the Bali Exporter Sarasehan in Badung, Friday, July 17.
In accordance with the mandate of Law Number 21 of 2019 concerning Animal, Fish, and Plant Quarantine, placing quarantine as the front line of biosafety as well as an economic tool that supports the smooth running of international trade.
"In the past, quarantine was only understood as an institution that examined goods, now our tasks are much broader. We maintain biosafety so that threats of diseases in animals, fish, and plants do not enter Indonesia, while ensuring that the export and import processes run faster, more effective, and efficient," said Karding.
He gave an example of the outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) in 2022 which entered through Aceh and then spread to various areas. The economic impact is very large, with the need for recovery budget reaching around Rp. 38.6 trillion.
In addition to causing economic losses, the outbreak also resulted in a significant decline in livestock populations. According to Karding, this incident is a lesson that prevention is always cheaper than handling after the disease spreads.
"Therefore, the function of biosecurity cannot be negotiated. Prevention must be strengthened so that the threat of disease does not interfere with food security and trade," he said.
On the other hand, Karding admitted that there were still a number of obstacles complained about by business actors, ranging from repeated inspections, long bureaucracy, to the length of service time which has the potential to reduce the quality of export commodities, especially perishable fishery and horticultural products.
To overcome this problem, Barantin is strengthening the integration of services with various related agencies and developing the digitization of the certification process so that services can be faster without reducing the aspects of supervision.
"Quarantine should not be a bottleneck. We want to be an accelerator so that exporters can get fast service, but biological safety is still maintained," said Karding.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
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