The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) revealed the trend of increasing imports of dates ahead of the 2023 fasting month and Eid. BPS Deputy for Production Statistics M Habibullah explained, in January 2023, date imports with the HS code 08041000 reached 13.23 million kg, an increase of 125.81% compared to the previous month which was only 5.85 million kg. In terms of value, RI's imports of dates ahead of fasting and Eid 2023 also rose 187.31% to US$22.5 million compared to last December which was only US$7.83 million. Last year, there were three main importers of dates to RI, namely Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. In detail, imports of dates from Egypt amounted to 25.14 million kg worth US$30.50 million, UAE 12.48 million kg worth US$14.39 million, and Saudi Arabia 10.53 million kg reaching US$11.67 million. In total, throughout 2022 Indonesia imported 61.35 million kg of dates from various countries with a value of US$86.25 million.
Apart from these three countries, Indonesia also imports dates from Tunisia, Iran, the United States (US), Algeria, Palestine, Libya and Namibia. Furthermore, BPS also has not seen the impact of the Turkish earthquake on date imports. Turkey itself is one of the countries of origin for importing dates to RI, although it is not the main one. "That if we look at it in relation to the Turkish earthquake, did it have an impact on the disruption of date imports? If we look at it, the Turkey earthquake occurred in February 2023, while the import data released was January 2023. So this will be seen later hopefully in the next release," said Habibullah in a press conference, Wednesday (15/2).
