Indonesia’s Export Share Declines in Rubber, Sugar Cane and Other Commodities
Indonesia has lost export share in several commodities, including rubber and sugar cane, according to findings by Statistics Indonesia reported by Kompas.com. The agency sees processing, technology and higher-value production as central to improving competitiveness.
Commodity export shares come under pressure
Indonesia’s share of exports in several commodities, including rubber and sugar cane, has declined, according to findings from Statistics Indonesia, known as BPS, reported by Kompas.com. The assessment points to a competitiveness problem in segments where Indonesia has a substantial agricultural resource base but does not always capture a correspondingly strong position in international markets.
The finding does not mean that these commodities have ceased to generate exports. Rubber remains an important Indonesian plantation product and a source of foreign exchange, while the sugar-cane industry supports farmers, workers and domestic sugar production. The concern is the direction of their export share: a decline indicates that Indonesian supply is not keeping pace with competing origins, changes in global demand or the development of higher-value product categories.
Processed exports dominate the wider trade structure
BPS data provide broader context for the agency’s emphasis on processing. Its analysis of export commodities for 2019–2023 showed that non-oil-and-gas products accounted for an average 94.20% of Indonesia’s exports per year. Manufactured products, in turn, represented an average 79.58% of non-oil-and-gas exports during the same period. The figures show that Indonesia’s export earnings already depend heavily on industry, even when the underlying raw materials come from plantations, farms, forests or mines.
Rubber illustrates the challenge. An earlier BPS analysis found that the value and volume of exports covering rubber, rubber products and plastics generally declined between 2013 and 2020, apart from an increase in 2017. Their contribution to total non-oil-and-gas export value also fell over that period; in 2013, the category accounted for 7.16%. This longer trend places additional pressure on producers and processors to compete through product quality, consistency and further processing rather than relying only on raw-material availability.
Technology and value addition become priorities
BPS considers the loss of export share evidence that commodities need more processing, technological input and added value, Kompas.com reported. For rubber, that can shift commercial attention from unprocessed or lightly processed material toward industrial products that meet precise buyer specifications. For sugar cane, the same policy direction puts the focus on efficient milling and a broader range of processed outputs. The available findings do not specify investment targets, new capacity or a timetable for these changes.
The implications extend across the supply chain. Farmers need processors capable of paying for reliable quality, while factories require consistent feedstock and technology that can produce goods accepted in demanding markets. Exporters must identify where Indonesian products can compete beyond price alone, and investors must distinguish between projects supported by durable demand and those dependent on commodity cycles. The BPS findings therefore frame declining export share as both a market warning and an industrial-policy issue: Indonesia has the raw materials, but retaining a larger portion of international demand depends increasingly on what it can manufacture from them.
