Indonesian CG visits BQATI: 'Bilateral trade can be enhanced through joint efforts'

Pakistan and Indonesia have a great trade potential and can extend bilateral trade through joint efforts, said H.E. Hadi Santoso, Honourable Consul General of the Republic of Indonesia during visit of Bin Qasim Association of Trade & Industry (BQATI).
The meeting was also attended by the Chairman Port Qasim Authority (PQA), Aga Jan Akhtar who also emphasised that the Port Qasim Industrial Zone offers tremendous potential for the investment. The Chairman PQA also extended his utmost co-operation to facilitate the local and foreign investment in the Port Qasim area.
The CG was welcomed by the Patron-In-Chief BQATI, Mian Muhammad Ahmed who highlighted the role of BQATI as a vehicle to facilitate the trade and investment. Rasheed Jan Mohammed, President BQATI gave a presentation to introduce the association and on the aspects of trade between Pakistan and Indonesia.
Rasheed while acknowledging that trade between the two countries are indeed expanding, there is a great potential to increase exports of rice, meat and other products from Pakistan to Indonesia. Presently Indonesia is the largest exporter of palm oil, to Pakistan. The ratio of Indonesia exports to Pakistan in last three years have gone up from 30 percent to 70 percent.
Pakistan is normally importing 2.3 million tons per annum of RBD palm oil and RBD palm olien and out of this quantity, 70 percent is now coming from Indonesia. This is primarily because of the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) between Pakistan and Indonesia whereby Pakistan government had given the duty advantage of 15 percent on the imports of edible oil from Indonesia.
Rasheed requested the Consul General that while Pakistan government has given 15 percent duty advantage to Indonesia, the Indonesian government may also reciprocate by withdrawing the export duty on crude palm oil (CPO). In view of the export duty imposed by Malaysia and Indonesia on CPO, practically all the palm oil refineries in Pakistan are shut down as CPO is the basic raw material to operate the physical refineries. It was also emphasised in the presentation that the Consul General may also help to improve the export volume from Pakistan as we have huge production of rice and we can meet the requirement of Indonesia in terms of quality and quantity.
Although Indonesia is also a net producer of rice, generally they import 750,000 to 1.00 million tons of rice per annum to maintain the buffer stocks. Unfortunately, Indonesia is hardly buying any rice from Pakistan as last year Indonesian share of buying rice from Pakistan was only 0.76 of the total rice imported in to the country. Another area where Pakistan can increase its exports to Indonesia is the livestock and meat. The Consul General in his address was very receptive and assured his fullest co-operation to increase the bilateral trade between the two countries. He was very much proactive in introducing his economic team not only to explore the avenues to enhance the trade but also to sort out the ongoing issues of export tax on CPO, certificate of origin and other related matters.-PR