JAKARTA (Yosefardi) – The Industry ministry supports proposal of the trade ministry to impose zero import duty for cocoa, Bisnis Indonesia reported this morning.
MS Hidayat, trade minister, said the cocoa industry is growing fast in the past four months but the local production of cocoa ore is not growing which curbs the industry growth.
Therefore MS Hidayat said the government will support the production of local cocoa ores through intensifying the land area and increasing the productivity, and the last effort is to impose zero import duty from current 5% duty.
The government reported the national cocoa production reaches 700,000-900,000 tons while the Association reported production of 450,000-500,000 tons. While the utilization reached 43.5% in 2010.