The 2024 Country Coordination Meeting: Opportunity to mainstream the EFTA CEPA agreement and collaboration on traceability system

The CCC Meeting is a yearly opportunity to discuss and to finalize the annual workplan between SIPPO and each Business Support Organizations (BSOs), as well as to identify potential collaboration with other stakeholders. This meeting marks as an important momentum to ensure that the workplan developed are aligned with BSO needs and priorities in the country, to furthermore ensure its sustainability in the future. SIPPO Indonesia is currently collaborating with four BSOS, namely Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises (MoSMEs) for natural ingredients sector, Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF) for fish and seafood sector, Ministry of Trade (MoT) for technical wood sector, and Indonesian Essential Oils Council (DAI) for natural ingredients sector particularly essential oils. Additionally, SIPPO is also collaborating with few other SECO-funded projects including GQSP Smart II Fish project, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and Promise II Impact project.

During the opening of the meeting, BSOs presented the highlights of achievement in the first semester of 2024, as a reflection of the workplan development for 2025. Some highlights mentioned by our BSOs are including the accomplishment of selling mission for two selected coffee companies to prospective buyers in Switzerland and Netherlands – with total value of EUR 288,000 for TSJA-Blaser trading in Switzerland and USD 250,000 for Java Halu Coffee-Daarnhouwer trading in Netherlands; improved market intelligence capabilities to identify market segments of fish and seafood during Seafood Expo Global 2024; improved data collection during market orientation mission for technical wood; and expanded collaboration to support responsible sourcing of essential oils.

Moving forward, the overall workplan in 2025 will be focusing mainly on capacity building for company assessment, market intelligence, development of sector export promotion strategy, and B2B matchmaking including expand network with importers and other private sectors. All these workplan will be crosscutting with sustainability and digitalization themes, including capacity building on mandatory regulations, improvement of digital learning platforms, development of segmented database, and improvement of social media visibility. Specifically, the BSOs also expressed their needs on strategy development to optimize the use of virtual promotion and virtual matchmaking – which is fully aligned with SIPPO’s mandates.

The discussion sessions have also resulted in some prioritization and potential collaboration for year 2025. First, there is a willingness from the BSOs to mainstream and to prioritize the use of EFTA CEPA agreement to support the export promotion of each sector to Switzerland market. Ferry Noviandrio Prakasa Fenty from MMAF mentioned, “The use of EFTA CEPA agreement are still limited for fish and seafood sector in comparison for natural ingredients sector, so we would like to have further discussion with relevant actors in fish and seafood sectors on what are the challenges and how can we maximize the use of this agreement”.

Second, a potential collaboration was discussed among DAI, Promise II Impact project and GRI. It focuses on the enhancement of responsible sourcing of essential oils and patchouli through the improvement of traceability or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. An alignment of environmental, social, and governance in the ERP system will also be a potential to be explored.

In overall, SIPPO received positive feedback both from SECO and BSOs towards the workplan and potential collaboration identified from the meeting. All the participants appreciated the opportunity provided to meet and to discuss among stakeholders. They hoped that this strong and continuous collaboration can gradually support the improvement of market access for more sustainable products and services in the coming years.