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Ministry prepares Rp 880b to anticipate drought
The Agriculture Ministry says it has specially allocated Rp 880 billion (US$65
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he Agriculture Ministry says it has specially allocated Rp 880 billion (US$65.12 million) to anticipate the impacts of drought on the agriculture sector.
Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman said in Jakarta on Monday that the ministry had readied Rp 2 trillion to repair tertiary irrigation systems nationwide.
'The House of Representatives Commission IV, which oversees agriculture, has just given us approval to use Rp 880 billion of the total budget to tackle drought in several areas,' he said as quoted by Antara news agency after a coordination meeting on drought at the ministry.
Representatives of relevant institutions, such as the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) and the Public Works and Public Housing Ministry, attended the meeting.
Amran said that at present, around 17,000 hectares of the total 9.2 million ha of paddies in Indonesia had suffered harvest failure due to drought. They were located in Central Java, Lampung and West Java, among other areas.
He said the government had anticipated the long dry spell, which began in December 2014, by, among others things, distributing 21,000 water pumps to farmers, developing 1,000 embung (small artificial lakes) and repairing 1.3 million ha of tertiary irrigation systems.
Amran said the government had expanded the coverage of paddies by 400,000 ha during the period of October-March, to compensate for harvest failure in several areas.
The minister said only around 110,000 ha of agricultural land had been affected by drought so far this year, lower than 250,000 last year.
Commission IV head Edhy Prabowo said the government must focus its attention on tackling the drought. He said the commission supported the Agriculture Ministry's work on the issue, including by allowing the ministry to shift a portion of its budget to cover drought-tackling efforts in several areas. (ebf)(+++)
