Minister of Industry Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita is targeting a number of new export markets in Latin American countries to the Middle East. The goal is to strengthen the industrial sector in the midst of today's global challenges. He acknowledged that the industry's challenges in the future will be even more difficult. His party has also started discussing mitigation with a number of associations responding to global risks. "First, the important thing is to open new export markets, we will open access, try to open market access in Latin America, South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia," said the Minister of Industry at the Economic Growth Press Conference in the 3rd Quarter, Monday. (7/11/2022).
Mitigation measures include increasing domestic market domination, strengthening and encouraging promotion and cross-sectoral cooperation. This is also supported by the policy of Increasing the Use of Domestic Products (P3DN). "And the third step, strengthening industrial competitiveness through easy access to raw materials, strengthening the business and production ecosystem. We can see various instruments, government import duties, or industrial raw materials we can relax fiscally, and many other instruments that can be used," he explained. Previously, the Minister of Industry Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita revealed that positive growth occurred in the non-oil and gas industrial sector. The figure reached 4.88% in the third quarter of 2022 from the previous figure last year. "The growth of the non-oil and gas industry in the third quarter on a year-on-year basis reached 4.88%, which is certainly better than the previous growth rate of 4.43%," he said at the press conference on the achievement of economic growth in the third quarter, Monday (7/11/2022).
He said the Ministry of Industry had conducted industrial clustering referring to the contribution to economic growth. There are at least 3 industrial clusters, namely, industries that grow stronger, industries that grow slowly, and industries that experience contraction. On the stronger industrial side, Minister of Industry Agus said that the support was the transportation equipment industry, then the machinery industry to the electronics industry. This increase is referred to as the fruit of the policies taken by the government. Then, in the industrial cluster that experienced a slowdown in growth, there was the food and beverage industry. According to him, the growth of the food and beverage industry is still low compared to conditions before the Covid-19 pandemic. "We will return this from various reasons why growth slows down, there is a connection that demand from abroad is also disrupted due to global economic pressures and the input is quite high. Now it is related to raw materials, both the availability and prices of the raw materials themselves, the other (because) the strengthening (exchange rate) of the dollar," he explained. Furthermore, in the third cluster, Agus explained that several industries experienced negative growth. For example, there is the minerals industry and the metal industry. "The furniture was also quite hit, as we said, the same as the previous cluster, there were a lot of market weakness, especially in Europe and the high value of inputs or raw materials," he explained. Referring to data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), in the third quarter, the industrial sector contributed 17.88% and the mining sector contributed 13.47%. Then the agricultural sector contributed 12.91%, the trade sector contributed 12.74%, and the construction sector contributed 9.45%.
