<![CDATA[Indonesia is the world's largest coconut producer, contributing 27.5 percent of global output, yet earns lower coconut export revenues than Thailand, which produces only 1.09 percent. This paradox reflects a structural value-added gap rooted in different agribusiness orientations: Indonesia remains trapped in a copra commodity orientation, while Thailand has developed a high-value processed-product orientation. Methodologically, this study uses a comparative secondary-data analysis within the Global Value Chain (GVC) governance framework to characterize each region's value chain position, combined with the Hayami value-added method to quantify and compare value-added multipliers. The gap is operationalized as the difference in value-added multipliers and average export unit values between Gorontalo, Indonesia, and Thailand, using harmonized official data from FAO, WITS/UN Comtrade, BPS Gorontalo, and Scopus-indexed literature. Three findings emerge. First, Indonesia's average export price (USD 318 per tonne) is less than half of Thailand's (USD 694); the value-added multiplier for copra in Gorontalo ranges from 4 to 10 times, while processed products reach up to 35 times. Second, Gorontalo operates under market-type governance with farmers as price-takers, whereas Thailand has advanced towards modular-relational governance through integrated processing and export clusters. Third, the volatility of the Farmer Terms of Trade for Plantation Smallholders (NTPR), fluctuating between 142.40 and 158.98 within a single year, evidences structural dependence on global commodity price cycles. This study offers the first explicitly comparative, secondary-data value-added gap analysis between an Indonesian coconut region and Thailand, with policy implications for subnational commodity-to-product transformation.]]>
