Amlapura (Antara Bali) - Shrimp has remained Indonesia's prime export commodity besides tuna and seaweed earning up to US$1.576 billion for the country.
"Shrimp is until now still a prime export commodity," Fisheries and Marine Resources Minister Fadel Muhammad said at the opening of Shellfish and Superior Shrimp Stock Production Center (Brodstock) by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono here on Monday.
The minister said Indonesia's shrimp exports by the end of 2009 reached 240,250 tons out of a total export of fisheries reaching 881,413 tons earning US$1.576 for the country.
He admitted Indonesia so far still imported shrimps from the US namely from Florida and Hawaii.
With the establishment of brodstock in Bugbug, Fadel hoped shrimp imports could be reduced and even stopped.
He said the Bugbug brodstock vanamei shrimp culture would be the biggest in Southeast Asia. "The Bugbug brodstock will even become the world's biggest," he said.
Fadel said the Bugbug Brodstok would be able to produce 675, 000 shrimps. In other places the number is only between 250,000 and 300,000 a year.
Right now, he said the price of imported shrimps was quite high in the hands of buyers namely Rp400,000 per shrimp.
"The shrimps produced here would be sold at a price affordable by the people namely around Rp40,000," he said.
He said if imports could be reduced more foreign exchange would be saved.
President Yudhoyono on the occasion said Indonesia has a long coastline which is potential for improving the people's welfare.
"It will be a loss if the fishery and marine resources sector produces nothing because Indonesia's water territory is three times the land territory," he said.(*)
