October 14, 2009

The Indonesian government will open an import pipeline for shrimp based on a quota system following the shrimp processing industry's complaints about a shortage of shrimp supplies.

So far, the government had banned the import of vannamei shrimp. Every six months, the minister for maritime and fisheries and the minister for trade issues a joint regulation with regard to the importation of shrimp.

Maritime and Fisheries minister Freddy Numberi said the import of shrimp was a dilemmatic problem so that mature consideration was needed before a decision was to be made.

But Numberi said the government was also making efforts to ensure that shrimp and fish processing industries at home would not run short of supply so that their performance would not drop.

He received a report three months ago that fish processing units at home had been running short of shrimp for export. The problem was feared to offset the performance of the country's fishery exports which were targeted to reach US$2.8 billion in 2009.

Based on the ministry of maritime and fisheries data, the January-March 2009 period has been marked with shortage of shrimp supply, particularly shrimps produced at home.

In the first quarter of 2009, Indonesia's shrimp export volumes reached 42,433 tonnes, up 6.05 percent from that in the same period in 2008, which stood at 40,013 tonnes.

The value of the shrimp export in the January-March 2009 period was US$267.789 million, while in the same period in 2008 was US$266.96 million.