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ublicly listed companies may keep expanding their plantation areas as a ministerial regulation on the limitation of plantation areas currently being prepared would exempt them from the restriction.

The ministry'€™s plantation directorate secretary-general, Mukti Sardjono, said in Jakarta on Friday that publicly listed companies would not be affected by the planned ruling as part of their shares were owned by the public.

He said, however,that a listed company would be awarded an exemption only if the majority of its shares were owned by the public. '€œThe company should also be listed on the local stock exchange to get the exemption,'€ Mukti said.

The new regulation will revise Agriculture Ministry regulation No. 26/2007, which limits a plantation company and a group of companies from owning more than 100,000 hectares land throughout the country. In this ruling, all companies, listed or not listed, are prohibited from owning more than 100,000 hectares of land. The ruling does not affect existing land areas.

A number of publicly listed oil palm plantation companies that own more than 100,000 hectares land are PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources Technology (SMART) Tbk (320,463 hectares), PT Astra Agro Lestari Tbk with (192,372 hectares), and PT Perusahaan Perkebunan London Sumatra Indonesia Tbk (245,629 hectares). Wilmar International is listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX). Recently, Triputra Agro Persada Group, which owns 300,000 hectares, announced its plan to go public in the next three to five years.

Mukti said that the new ruling would also affect a group of companies. He said that a team from the Agriculture Ministry had cooperated with the Law and Human Rights Ministry to obtain access to data on the ownership of limited companies. '€œWe need this access to find out whether the companies are in one group or not,'€ Mukti said. He added that the new regulation should be finished by September.

Indonesia is the world'€™s largest palm oil producer with an annual output of 26 million tons from 9 million hectares of plantations, according to the latest data from Agricultural Ministry. It is reportedly planning to expand its palm plantations by 200,000 hectares a year.

Ministry data said that Crude Palm Oil (CPO) contributed US$19,350 in exports last year, more than half of total plantation exports, which reached $31,689. CPO was also the biggest export commodity in the plantation sector with around 20,573 tons exported in 2012. The ministry estimated that CPO production would increase to 24,431 tons this year.

Besides the Agriculture Ministry restriction, palm oil companies will also have to deal with the Forestry Ministry'€™s extension of the forest moratorium until 2015, meaning that until then, no new permits for forest and peatland clearance will be issued.

Several companies planned to expand to Africa because of the restriction, said an expert. Wilmar already started to do so in 2007, while Bakrie Sumatra Plantation and Sinar Mas Group were still studying the possibility. (nai)