Indonesia faces barriers to drive for tropical fruits

East Kalimantan farmers’ group Gapoktan finds it unfortunate that people outside Indonesia are missing out on their home-grown fresh and juicy mini papayas, bananas and dragon fruits. So far, most of their fresh fruit products are only consumed by locals buying from nearby markets because of a lack of infrastructure, making it expensive to deliver fruits across the country, let alone export them.
Fruit exporter EK Prima Ekspor Indonesia, a subsidiary of the United Arab Emirates’ retail giant LuLu Group International, knows first-hand how selling prices at the consumer level end up depending more on transport costs than on production costs.
“Transportation – from farmers to warehouses to airports and finally to the destination country – is very expensive. If our unique fruit doesn’t appeal to consumers, we could lose out to other countries, especially if they can produce similar fruit for cheaper prices,” said Irawan Santoso, head of the fruit and vegetable division of EK Prima.
Indonesia also has mangosteen, rambutan, snake fruit, jackfruit, soursop, breadfruit, guava and starfruit that grow in the tropical country, but they are not frequently consumed globally or even domestically.
The government aims to boost tropical-fruit production by expanding land for fruit plantations while also improving infrastructure and transport systems to decrease high distribution costs, as part of efforts to be the biggest tropical-fruit producer in Southeast Asia by 2025 and in the world by 2045.
President Joko Widodo has acknowledged that this is no easy task, especially with farmers’ preferences to use land for high-yielding commodities such as palm oil rather than fruit, which takes time to return on investment. 
Poor infrastructure has also driven up logistics costs for years.