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Agriculture ministry guarantees surplus rice stock
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A worker carries a sack of rice at the Cipinang Rice Market in East Jakarta. (Antara/Makna Zaezar)
T
he Agriculture Ministry has underlined that the country does not need to import rice, because the warehouses of state-owned logistics firm Bulog are fully stocked with rice.
“Bulog has an actual rice stock of 2.6 million tons today. In September, we will produce 3.2 million tons, 2.8 million tons in October and 2.8 million tons in November,” the ministry’s Food Resilience Agency (BKP) head, Agung Hendriadi, said in Jakarta on Monday as quoted by kompas.com.
The volume of rice stock would continue to increase through the yearend or early 2019 from large harvests expected in December 2018 and January 2019, said Agung. He added that monthly rice consumption was around 2.5 million tons.
Agung said that last year's surplus rice production of 13 million tons were stored at Bulog’s warehouses as well as at rice mills and at warehouses belonging to farmers and traders.
He said that about 1.4 million tons of rice was stored at rice mills.
In April, the government planned to import 2 million tons of rice this year, but Coordinating Economy Minister Darmin Nasution said that it had cancelled plans to import 600,000 tons of rice because the exporting countries could not meet the government's schedule.
The rice import issue prompted a dispute between Bulog president director Budi Waseso and Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita after Budi criticized the rice import policy, arguing that local farmers had produced enough rice to meet the demand. (bbn)
