REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, MAKASSAR -- India is ready to invest and cooperate with Indonesia to help realize its goal of achieving self-efficiency in sugar production, stated Secretary General of the Indonesia-India Association Gurumurthy Naratajan.

"We are ready to help Indonesia achieve its goal right from the stages of plantation, processing until the last process through various investment and cooperation schemes," Gurumurthy stated on the sidelines of an agribusiness investors' meeting held here on Tuesday.

He said investment worth US$5-10 billion could be made in the sugar business sector.

Gurumurthy affirmed that India has advanced technology that would offer huge benefits to the two sides if they cooperated in that sector.

"The technology we have enables us to produce sugar efficiently at a price that could be lowered by one-third of the normal price," he noted.

The first step that could be initiated in Indonesia is to modernize the country's old sugar mills.

"Most of the sugar factories in Indonesia were built during the Dutch occupation era. Their equipment must be modernized with the implementation of new technology, so that production could be increased," Naratajan said.

In South Sulawesi, The Green Thumb, an Indian sugar company, has signed a memorandum of understanding with the regional government of Bone District on the development of sugar agribusiness.

South Sulawesi Governor Syahrul Yasin Limpo stated that Indonesia's eastern regions needed sugar factories to meet the local requirement.

According to Limpo, these regions therefore needed better management, investment, technology, and mechanism to advance the nation's sugar industry.

"We hope the central government would encourage the development of the sugar industry in Indonesia's eastern regions," the governor added.

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