Between Levies and Benchmarks

A meeting three weeks ago at the trade ministry, held to discuss the benchmark prices for fish (HPI), quickly grew tense. For three hours, echelon III officials of the ministry of marine affairs and fisheries, the ministry of finance, and industry leaders argued over the pros and cons of raising the price.

The meeting concluded with an interim agreement: increases in the HPI would be rolled out in stages. Nurlaila Nur Muhammad, the ministry of trade's director of agricultural and forestry products, confirmed that benchmark prices would rise above their current levels. "Next week we will discuss the results of our calculations," she said last Wednesday.