JAKARTA, April 30 Asia Pulse - Indonesia needs to make more efforts toexport more valued-added commodities, an Indonesian senior AgricultureMinistry said.

So far the country has been exporting mainly unprocessed agriculturalproducts, Director General of Agricultural Processing and Marketing DelimaH Azahari said here Thursday.

She said Indonesia was annually enjoying a surplus of US$3.16 billion inits agricultural trade but the surplus was generated only by export ofplantation commodities.

"But in our trade in food crops, horticultural and animal husbandryproducts we are always suffering a deficit," she said on the sidelines ofan Agro and Food Expo at the Semanggi business center.

The exhibition features the products of government institutions andprivate companies engaged in the agricultural sector.

But Delima also said despite the surpluses, Indonesia was facing toughcompetition in the world market of plantation commodities. In the crudepalm-oil (CPO) market it was competing with Malaysia and in the coffee andpepper market with Vietnam.

The agricultural sector was contributing significantly to the country'sforeign exchange earnings but most of the exports were primary productswhile the intenational amrket of processed products was still dominated bydeveloped countries.

The low export of processed products, according to Delima, was aconsequence of previous policy to increase production.

The policy should be changed in favor of efforts to increase the addedvalue of the products, she said.

"In the future, we should focus on increasing added value, not only besatisified with export of raw products like we do now," Delima said,adding that the effort would take a huge amount of investment while thegovernment financing capability was limited.

With a popualtion of more than 210 million, Indonesia was a huge market toproducing countries, so Indonesia should try to maximise the benefit fromits domestic as well as foreign markets, Delima said.

"Considering its abundant natural resource, Indonesia must be developedinto a world exporter of processed products," she said.

Delima added Indonesia was cooperating closely with other ASEAN membercountries to promote its products and increase agricultural exports.