Competitiveness of Indonesia's edible-nest swiftlet exports

Abstract

Competitiveness is one of the essential factors in increasing exports of agricultural commodities to export markets. Indonesia is a significant producer and exporter of swiftlet nest products globally. This research aims to study Indonesian edible-nest swiftlet competitiveness and development potential in the primary export destination market in the RCEP (the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement) area. The study uses secondary export-import data between countries sourced from UN Comtrade from 2009 to 2019. Analyze competitiveness and potential for product development using the RCA, RSCA, EPD, and IIT methods. The study results show that, comparatively, Indonesian swiftlet nests are competitive in China, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Singapore markets and are not competitive in Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. The export markets of China and Vietnam are promising because they have reached the ideal position of a rising star. Meanwhile, the Thai market has the potential to be developed because the export market is still growing. The Singapore market also needs to be considered to create high-value processed products because it has relatively strong integration with the Indonesian swallow nest production structure.