TEMPO



 

Indonesia is the second-largest exporter of ornamental fish in the world after Japan, said Budi Sulistyo, Director General of Marine Fishery Products Competitiveness at the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries.

Budi believed that the country could become the world’s top exporter of such decoration fish. “This won’t only boost the potential for foreign exchange but also create and generate business opportunities because most of the fish business players are MSMEs,” he said at the ministry’s media center in Jakarta, on Thursday, June 6.

Thus, he urged all policymakers, including the government, ornamental fish associations, and the private sector, to revive the business. During his visits to several fish markets, he discovered that the turnover of the ornamental fish market in Parung reached Rp2 billion. “This is from domestic circulation,” he said.

The import value of ornamental fish in 2022 amounted to US$360.5 million. “Based on this figure, the average growth is 2.63 percent,” he added.

Budi also shared his optimism that the global ornamental fish market would keep growing. “The largest importer of ornamental fish is America totaling US$ 91 million, followed by the European Union with US$89 million, ASEAN with US$34 million, China with US$ 23 million, and the UK with US$23.35 million,” he outlined.

Budi assessed that the market of the fancy fish is highly promising. Meanwhile, the global ornamental fish trade is dominated by freshwater ornamental fish, which accounted for 77 percent, and the rest 34 percent were seawater ornamental fish. Therefore, this should be an advantage for Indonesia because of its abundance of ornamental fish.

“This is the natural wealth that we own. When we talk about ornamental fish, their sustainability is closely related to how we maintain the ecology and ecosystem,” Budi concluded.