Govt to minimize negative export growth

            The government will do its best to boost non-oil commodity exports so that they would not experience a negative growth in 2009, Trade Minister Mari Elka Pangestu said."We want to widen the range of our export target from minus 10 percent to zero percent. Zero percent is the best condition while the minus 10 percent is the worse one," the minister said on the sidelines of a working meeting in the trade ministry building here on Thursday.

            She said that her ministry was in the position of the optimistic scenario. Therefore, it would try to speed up export flows, expand its diplomacy and enhance trade security. Previously, the trade ministry has estimated that export growth would be minus five to 10 percent in 2009. Mari said that the decline in commodity prices had contributed to the growth contraction of the export volume this year. The negative growth was caused by global economic crisis.

            As a result, demand for exports from Indonesia`s main export destinations such as the United States and Japan also dropped. "We predict that exports would drop drastically but we would do our best to prevent the drastic fall such as what we have predicted," the trade minister said. She said that in order to maintain Indonesia`s export performance it would carry out efforts such as opening new markets, launching trade diplomacy and negotiations and intensifying export promotions.

            Previously, Finance Miniser Sri Mulyani Indrawati has asked the trade ministry to make an optimistic export growth estimate. "I hope that the trade ministry would make a more optimistic export estimate," the finance minister said when she opened a working meeting in the trade ministry office. She predicted that the total value of Indonesia`s exports in 2009 would reach a minus 30 percent while its total export volumes would be minus five to eight percent.