The Foods and Beverages Merchants in Jabodetabek Lost Their Income Until Rp 200 billion

Bad weather that hit several regions in Indonesia is large enough to impact the food and beverage industry in this country. For only the Jabodetabek area, the floods predicted suppress the turnover to 25 percent.

Chairman of the Food and Beverage Association of Indonesia (Gapmmi) Adhi Lukman explained, a decrease of revenue is due to the difficulty of the distribution of products from the factory to the market because of the flooding block. Thus, it spreads on the decline in consumption.

As an overall result, Adhi estimated the food and beverage industry in Jabodetabek lost the income until Rp 200 billion per day. “In the normal situation, the income in each day for this region reached USD 800 billion,” he said on Tuesday (01/21/2014).

It is not only the distribution to the consumer, food and beverage manufacturers must also bear the losses due to the distribution of raw materials from the another region which also faltered.

For example, the transportation of fresh fruit and meat from Central Java, currently takes up to four days. Though, it usually takes only a half day. “Whereas within five days, the fresh raw materials will rot in about 50 percent” he said.

It hasn’t counted yet the losses because the factory could not be operated due to workers who could not get in because of flooding, or because there is no electricity supply due to outages by PLN in some areas.

Despite the losses is in sight, according to Adhi, manufacturers of foods and beverages will not raise their selling prices. Because this problem is only temporary.

"I think Indonesia especially Jakarta floods should always have to think of alternative ways to reduce the losses of the merchants. Semisalnya have tools that can be used to accelerate the delivery of flood or other production. Insurance that provides comfort to open up business opportunities in Jakarta."