InfoSAWIT, JAKARTA - The fast palm oil plantation development implicates to the positive crude palm oil (CPO) production in Indonesia. The CPO export volume does too. Ministry of Agriculture noted that CPO and its derivatives export volume reached 12,3% within CPO and its derivative export value reached 14,1% in average.
It means palm oil sector can be said that it has big contribution to urge revenue in national scale. Export tax scheme which has been changed into Out fee still remains applied and becomes a way for the government to get cash that reaches trillion rupiah.
Palm oil has much contribution to the country. But the research development is not worth the contribution whereas the research can be a measurement to industrial development and increasing additional value for palm oil.
Unfortunately, Indonesia does not focus too much to get innovation in palm oil industries. This makes patent lists of palm oil innovation mastered by the countries which are not palm oil producers.
Based on the database PatentScope® World Intellectual Property Rights Organization (WIPO), there are 7.459 innovation to the palm oil industries if the word “palm oil” is searched in the patent description.
But many innovations are dominated by foreign countries, such as, the United States of America (USA) about 55%, Netherland about 7%, England about 6%, Swiss about 4% and Germany about 3%.
It gets worse to know that the patent applicants are mostly from palm oil innovation which are dominated by US industries, such asm Procter & Gamble (P&G) is 14,35%.
Meanwhile, Asean countries that got palm oil innovations are Malaysia and Singapore. Malaysia got 1,06% and Singapore got 0,04% of total palm oil innovation in the world. Indonesia got 0,04% innovation and Thailand got 0,05%. (Source: Majalah InfoSAWIT, December 2012)
Boost Palm Oil Researches
Palm Oil Plantation Fund Management Agency (PFMA) proactively did supports through palm oil research and development program. It would be about to reinforce, develop, and empower palm oil industries in Indonesia in upstream to downstream sectors. This starts from encouraging the students’ will in Indonesia to research palm oil, create the basic to develop the industries in national scale to be stronger and more sustainable.
Director of PFMA, Eddy Abdurrachman said that research and development program in PFMA would involve some initiatives, such as, Program Grant Riset Sawit (GRS). It is divided into two ways, such as, selection and initiative.
“This program was designed to escalate research and development in sustainable and environmental palm oil. The main focus would cover, escalating productivity and efficiency, sustainability, creating new markets and products, and escalating smallholders’ welfare,” he said when delivering speech in the Pekan Riset Sawit Indonesia 2023 (PERISAI 2023) with the theme "Reinforcing Palm Oil Industry in Combating Global Challenges through Technological Innovation" in The Westin Surabaya, that InfoSAWIT attended by the late of October 2023.
He also mentioned since it started in 2015, Program Grant Riset Sawit (GRS) has funded 329 cooperation contracts with 88 research institutions in 19 provinces and involved 1202 researchers.
In the research result commercialization, PFMA is in cooperation with Asosiasi Inventor Indonesia (AII) to get technology readiness assessment from the result researches funded through GRS.
There have been 30 inventions from the research results are ready to get commercial. Some investors are interested in by making agreement of technology secret. Eddy said, through Palm Oil Research and Development Program, PFMA is committed to develop palm oil industries which are more sustainable, innovative and having highly competitiveness. (for more, please read Majalah InfoSAWIT, November 2023). (T2)