Jakarta (VNA) - The Indonesian government's plantation and horticulture development programme is expected to create 1.6 million jobs in two years, Indonesian Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman said on October 9.
Speaking in a press conference in Jakarta, he noted that the programme is carried out by optimising a budget of 9.95 trillion IDR (around 600 million USD).
The budget will be used mainly for the provision of free seeds and seedlings to farmers under the program, which covers the development of commodities like cocoa, coffee, coconut, cashew, and nutmeg with a total area of 800,000 hectares.
He also affirmed that the government continues to strengthen the downstreaming agenda in the agriculture sector as a strategic step to increase the added value of products, create jobs, and accelerate equitable welfare.
The minister underlined that the economic potential from coconut downstreaming is enormous, noting that processing coconut into virgin coconut oil can boost the price by up to 100 times.
In addition to coconut, the government is also preparing downstreaming for gambier (Uncaria gambir), given Indonesia's position as a country that supplies 80 percent of the world's gambier needs.
The same approach is also taken for the palm oil commodity, which will be processed into products like biofuel, cooking oil, and margarine./.
