Nunung Nuryartono1, Muhamad Amin Rifai1, Fakhri Rizqullah1, Syamsul Hidayat Pasaribu1, Triana Anggraenie2, Scott Waldron3 & Alexandra Langford3
1Faculty of Economics and Management, IPB University, Indonesia
2International Center for Applied Finance and Economics (InterCafe-IPB)
3School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
The seaweed industry increased rapidly in Indonesia in the 21st century and boomed in production since 2012. Indonesia is currently the second largest seaweed producer in the world with share production of worldwide around 30%. Indonesia as an archipelago country has the potential to improve seaweed production and export in the global market. This research aims to overview the competitiveness of Indonesia’s seaweed in the international market, including dried seaweed and processed seaweed and compare the competitiveness of seaweed with the main exporters worldwide by using the international market share index (IMS), the trade competitiveness index (TC), and revealed comparative advantage index (RCA) from 2012 to 2021. Based on the result of Trade Competitive Index shows Indonesia has strong comparative advantage for almost every product, except HS 130231 as moderate comparative advantage. For RCA analysis shows that all seaweed product has a strong comparative advantage, the most interest thing is RCA for processed seaweed had lower value than dried seaweed. It is indicated Indonesia has potentially to improve processed seaweed product. Furthermore, this paper also analyzes determinant factor of seaweed export by using gravity models. The results show that GDP per capita of country destination, Real Exchange Rate, and Distance has a significant effect on export dried seaweed. while for processed seaweed, the determining factors of export are price and GDP per capita.