The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the Indonesian Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF) and the Embassy of Switzerland launched the next phase of the SMART-Fish project, which will be implemented within the Global Quality and Standards Programme (GQSP) – a strategic partnership between Switzerland and UNIDO to promote trade and competitiveness through strengthening the quality and standards compliance capacity to facilitate markets for SMEs in eight countries, including Indonesia.
The GQSP-Indonesia is a three-year Swiss-funded technical assistance project with a budget of USD1.75 million, which aims at increasing the market access of Indonesian fisheries and aquaculture products through improving compliance capacity with international quality standards. The project builds on the results of SMART-Fish I, which successfully benefited more than 6,000 individuals and which generated an annual economic impact of USD22.6 million through increased sales in domestic and export markets. SMART-Fish interventions also encouraged more than USD11.8 million of investment by farmers, processors and the government.
“We consider SMART-Fish to be a flagship programme, both in Indonesia and globally”, said UNIDO Representative in Indonesia Esam Alqararah. “It follows an innovative approach combining improvements in productivity with quality and standards compliance and sustainability”.
Of particular importance is the first ever export of 200 tons of frozen pangasius fillet in May 2019 to Saudi Arabia, valued at USD472,000. It is estimated that the Middle East demand for Indonesian pangasius amounts to USD36 million annually. With such good results from the current programme, the Swiss government has committed to continue its support for SMART-Fish within the GQSP Programme at large.
Original source: UNIDO
Published on 04 July 2019
