SOUTH SULAWESI AWAITING 100 FISHING BOATS FROM SOUTH KOREA

Palu, March 6 (ANTARA) - The Central Sulawesi administration is awaiting the arrival of 100 fishing boats from South Korea based on a cooperation agreement signed in 2009.

"We have sent a letter to South Korea about how the boats were going to be sent to South Sulawesi," Governor Bandjela Paliudju said here on Saturday.

Paliudju said the boats expected from South Korea would not only be used by local fishermen but also for the shipment of seaweed from the province and other purposes.

"The program will be of great benefit for the two parties because it will help step up their economic development," the governor said.

In April 2009, South Korea's Jeollanam-Do provincial administration and the South Sulawesi provincial government signed a letter of intent (LoI) on seaweed management in the eastern parts of South Sulawesi.

The area prepared by the Central Sulawesi provincial administration for seaweed cultivation was about one million hectares wide stretched along Tomini Bay and Tolo Bay coastlines.

The South Korean side intended to use seaweed from Central Sulawesi to produce environmentally friendly biofuel.

With warm and slow current velocity, the waters off Central Sulawesi coastlines were good for seaweed cultivation, and that it attracted South Korean investors to invest.

Many farmers in the districts of Banggai Kepulauan, Banggai, Morowali, Parigi Moutong, Tolitoli, and Kota Palu in Cenral Sulawesi independently developed seaweed cultivation with satisfactory results.

The farmers sell their seaweed products to traders from Makassar and Surabaya.

The seaweed cultivation area in the province is about 1,500 hectares wide with the product of each harvest every 45 days estimated to be around 4,500 tons.

This was why the Central Sulawesi provincial administration agreed to make one million hectares of land available for South Korean-funded seaweed cultivation projects.

South Korean investment in seaweed cultivation in Central Sulawesi was one of the activities agreed on in a Letter of Intent (LoI) signed in Palu in April last year to establish sister-province relations between Central Sulawesi and South Korea's Jeollanan-do province.