"If the fuels are no longer subsidized I fear the fate of our tuna long liners (will be worsening)," he said here on Friday.
Overall, the Indonesian tuna long liners had so far received 25 kiloliters of subsidized fuels per month, he said.
Indonesia had so far exported a great deal of tuna to European Union, Japan and the United States, he said.
"Do we not want to be a tuna-exporting country any longer?" he asked.
He said the number of tuna long liners currently made up 0.1 percent of the country`s overall fishing ships having a dead weight tonnage of more than 30 tons.
Earlier, the government decided to postpone a plan to raise the price of subsidized fuels sold to fishermen so that fishermen who had ships of more than 30 gross tons would not be requested to consume non-subsidized fuels.
"We will continue to provide subsidized fuels to fishermen (having ships of more than 30 GT) as a manifestation of our commitment to protect fishermen," Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Sharif Cicip Sutardjo said.
The decision was reached at a meeting of six relevant ministers at the weekend. Under the decision, the price of subsidized fuels sold to fishermen remained unchanged, he said.
The six ministers were energy and mineral resources minister, maritime affairs and fisheries minister, transportation minister, finance minister, national development planning minister/chief of the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) and the coordinating minister for economic affairs. (*)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
Copyright © ANTARA 2012
