MARINE & FISHERY BUSINESS POTENTIALS

CURRENT OUTLOOK

Marine & Fishery sector has always been set as the primary mover of Maluku's economic development. Unfortunately to this date very little, if not none, major investments and/or businesses within this sector survived long enough to really make an impact to the local communities.

For the past five years, hundreds of billion or rupiah have been poured in by the central government of Indonesia through various programs, including the famous coastal communities empowerment programs. A chunck volume of these funds went through the Provincial Marine & Fishery Department, we are yet to see the significant & sustainable impact of that these funds deliver to the coastal communities in Maluku. So far there has been no promising sign of improvements that lead to sustainable development.

The Provincial Marine & Fishery Department has no constructive development programs that may contribute to Maluku's Sustainable Development. There's little evidence of any programs that lead to encouraging new businessses and/or investments within the sector. Most of their programs are derived from the central government. The implementation of these programs are often done with very little, if not zero, performance measurements. Furthermore, lack of proper coordination between the Investment Coordinating Board and the Marine & Fishery Department also played vital role to Maluku's failure in attracting new & sustainable businesses/ investments.

SUGGESTIONS FOR BUSINESS OWNERS/ ENTREPRENEURS

  1. Work with a Maluku-based independent organization that understand Maluku's political & business climate. Try to establish an agreed-upon terms & conditions with your local partner prior to doing any form of transactions,

  2. Identify the location where you wished to establish your business/ investment in the arrange for a visit to the location. We strongly recommend you to start either within the Ambon City area or within the Central Maluku regency. Any other areas outside the two are have limited supporting infrastructure, particularly on electricity power and fresh water

  3. Get to know the local leaders such as the church/ mosque leaders and the head of the village, usually called the "Raja" (King),

  4. If possible, establish a working cooperation with the local village to give assurance that your business will provide significant impact to their well being,

  5. Develop a feasibility study jointly with the individuals from local universities and local NGOs.  Several credible NGOs such as the ones within The Baileo Network are highly recommended, 

  6. Try to hook up with business owners that are currently doing their business in Maluku to get a better understanding on how businesses/ investments are done in Maluku, particularly within the area of your choice,

  7. Within the framework of Local Autonomy, you are most likely be dealing more with government officials at regency level than provincial level. Having said that, you need to make sure that your local partner(s) have sufficient networking with the relevant government officials in order to get things done,

  8. Do not directly go into a Full Investment mode. As much as possible, try to start with a joint-venture model and/or working cooperation model. You need to balance your risks and be able to mitigate them when the risks pop up. Some people will recommend you to go into a Full & Direct Investment. It's up to you to decide, however, historically very few full & direct investments had their success in Maluku, 

  9. Do not start your business using a "big-bang" approach. Start with a pilot approach, with a size suffcient enough to be used in justifying your future investments. Let it run for the next 3-6 months to identify potential challenges that you may have neglected/ missed out during your planning session. Quite often some unpredictable instances occurred during this stage. You'll then be able to rectify your plan accordingly without risking your business.

 

ONE-DOOR POLICY

Maluku has vast business opportunities. From fisheries, agri-businesses to mining and oil & gas, all are available to be explored and leveraged. However, the processes in establishing each of these businesses varies from one sector to another. The Provincial Government of Maluku understood the disadvantages cause by this condition, thus, they're now in the process of streamlining all these different processes into a "One-Door Policy".

The "One-Door Policy" is aimed to streamline the processes of establishing any investments and/or businesses in Maluku. Hopefully this initiative will attract more businesses coming to the province. The Planning & Development Board of Maluku Province is the lead organization responsible in making this happen. The One-Door Policy initiative will be formally launched on June 17, 2008 at the Maluku's Representative Office in Jakarta by the Governor of Maluku.

We are yet to see the effectiveness of this initiative and the number of new businesses/ investments the intiative may be able to attract to Maluku.