Competitiveness of southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia's leading export commodity cocoa in the international market

ABSTRACT

One of Indonesia's cocoa bean production centers is Southeast Sulawesi Province with a production value of 115,023 tons, with a total export value of US$ 1.5 billion in 2019. The export value of this cocoa commodity is still quite high during the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Trademap data, the value of Indonesia's cocoa exports in 2021 will reach US$1.2 billion, only down 2.9% from the previous year. The problems faced in cocoa development are the quality of the product is still low, the development of upstream and downstream cocoa products has not been optimal, and the continuity of cocoa supply has not been fulfilled. This study aims to analyze the development of cocoa commodity exports and measure the level of competitiveness of Southeast Sulawesi cocoa in the international market. The analytical method used to see the development of cocoa exports is quantitative descriptive using library research and to analyze the competitiveness of Southeast Sulawesi cocoa using the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) formula. The data used in this study is time series data from 2011-2021. Based on the results of research conducted, it shows that the development of Indonesia's cocoa exports in 2011-2021 fluctuated wherein the decline and increase occurred during the last 10 years, while the development of Southeast Sulawesi cocoa exports could be seen in 2015-2021 with fluctuating increases and decreases. Meanwhile, the results of the competitiveness analysis using the RCA method on cocoa in Southeast Sulawesi during the 2011-2021 period showed a fluctuating RCA value with an average of 4.8. With a value of more than 1, it means that Southeast Sulawesi cocoa commodities have strong competitiveness or it can be said that they also have a comparative advantage.