03/21/08 Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono said Indonesia lacked agribusiness players despite the fact that it is a big agrarian country.
"The number of people willing to do agribusiness in Indonesia is even smaller than that of Singapore which has a large number of agribusiness investors," the minister said when he opened the "Agrinex Expo 2008" here on Friday.
He said that the number of players in the agribusiness sector in Indonesia was small although the agribusiness sector in the country had bright prospect as it was predicted that the need for agricultural products, particularly food and energy, in the future would continue to increase.
"I guarantee that the agribusiness sector will become a promising business in the furue because demand for agricultural products in times to come would not decline," the minister said.
Unluckily, the number of businesspeople who wanted to do business in the agricultural sector in the country is small so that efforts to encourage businessmen to do business in that sector are needed, he said.
"Many people still consider that agricultural sector is a losing and outdated business," Anton said adding that the assumption was wrong because there was no other business sectors which could provide profit more than 100 percent in four months than the agricultural sector.
But he acknowledged that agricultural land in Indonesia was still too small, namely only 20 million hectares while the number of farmers reached 25 million.
He said that many farmers in Indonesia only owned 0.3 hectare of agricultural land so that it was difficult for them to increase national agricultural production.
"That is why we need to use a correct technology and to optimize the use of land to increase the country`s agricultural production," he added. (*)
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