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Bulog records continuing rice imports
The brouhaha over rice imports may have subsided, but the underlying argument is still there, likely hampering the government’s effort to find a solid solution for the rice import issue
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he brouhaha over rice imports may have subsided, but the underlying argument is still there, likely hampering the government’s effort to find a solid solution for the rice import issue.
A few days ago, Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution said the government had decided to import 2 million tons of rice this year.
The decision to import rice was made late last year, and 1.4 million tons of rice have arrived from overseas so far.
Providing different figures, State Logistics Agency (Bulog) president director Budi Waseso said his office had recorded 1.8 million tons of imported rice as of late September.
Budi said during a discussion on food security with the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) on Monday that “as much as 1.4 million tons of rice has arrived in my warehouse, and more is coming [...]. Some of the imported rice just arrived at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta today and yesterday”.
Budi, who took office in April, and thereofore after the import decision had been made, said his agency aimed to absorb “as much local rice as possible” next year, but he did not specify the exact target.
Following his inauguration as Bulog head, Budi had promised President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo that the country would not need to import rice, thanks to adequate supply.
At an earlier occasion, Budi, a former police detective, emphasized that the current rice stocks of 2.4 million tons were adequate to feed the country until June next year.
Bulog also expected to buy some 4,000 tons of rice per day from local farmers until the end of this year to bring the year-end stocks up to 3 million tons, he added.
He denied a claim by Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita, who had said that Bulog had leased a big portion of its warehouses for commercial use and, therefore, could not accommodate the imported rice.
“Some of our warehouses are not used to keep the government’s rice reserve but [solely] to absorb domestic harvests, like those in West Nusa Tenggara, East Java, Makassar [in South Sulawesi] and Central Java,” said Budi. “If those warehouses get filled up with imported rice, we won’t be able to absorb the domestic supply.”
Agriculture expert M. Husein Sawit said the government had never achieved its domestic rice absorption target. For example, in 2017, Bulog had only absorbed 58 percent of its targeted 3.7 million tons of domestic rice.
This year, he estimated the agency would be able to reach 67 percent of the domestic rice absorption target, which was set at 2.7 million tons.
Husein added that this year’s rice imports at 1.8 million tons were a drastic increase from the combined rice import of 323,000 tons from 2014 to 2017.
Commenting on the issue, Kadin chairman Rosan Perkasa Roeslani urged policymakers to focus on agricultural productivity, saying what needed to be addressed first and foremost was how to increase yields per hectare.
Speaking at a separate occasion, Enggartiasto refused to say whether the government planned to import rice next year.
“[Ask the] coordinating economic minister,” he answered promptly.
