Jakarta (Antara Bali) - The government has prepare a number of policy instruments to offset trade deficit as a result of increasing imports and declining exports, a trade official said.
"To suppress the deficit, the government has prepared a number of policy instruments," Bachrul Chairi, the head of policy development and assessment affairs of the Trade Ministry, said in written statement here on Sunday.
He said the instruments the government had prepared concerned efforts to develop down stream products to overcome export performance. This is because the export decline is not caused by the drop in product demand for Indonesian products or commodities but the decline in the values of a number of Indonesian commodities in the world market.
Bachrul said that trade deficit was also experienced by a number of countries such as Thailand (minus US$16.8 billion) and Japan (-US$67.7 billion).
The trade ministry officials also explained that the second policy instrument was an effort to diversify export market in line with the emergence of new markets in Africa and Latin America.
The new markets grew significantly reaching an average of 115 percent, though their export scales were still small, namely under US$100 million.
"We should utilize the emerging market potentials," he stressed.(*/DWA)
