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Trade Ministry, food agency clash over garlic imports
The two government institutions disagree on the need for garlic imports amid high prices of the commodity.
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Women peel garlic imported from China in Tanah Sareal, Bogor, West Java, in November 2020. (JP/P.J.Leo)
T
he National Food Agency (Bapanas) has urged the Trade Ministry to issue long-awaited import permits for garlic, as stalled purchases and shipments of the commodity have curbed stocks and sent prices up.
I Gusti Ketut Astawa, undersecretary for food availability and stabilization at Bapanas, projected on Monday that the country’s demand for garlic would be 669,354 tonnes this year, some 600,000 of which would be met through imports.
Almost five months into the year, however, import permits issued so far total only 176,000 tonnes, and 73 percent of that combined quota has already been realized, according to Bapanas.
“The Trade Ministry must speed up import permit [issuance] to ensure supply in June and beyond,” Ketut said, as quoted by Kompas.
Importers organized under the Indonesian Onion and Root Vegetable Entrepreneurs (Pusbarindo) trade association said on May 25 that they had been applying for permits since February but that most of the requests had stalled with the ministry.
“Between 250,000 and 300,000 tonnes of import permits should have been issued [by now],” Pusbarindo chairman Reinhart Antonius Batubara told the audience in a discussion in Jakarta, Kompas reported.
The association insists that the businesses have met all the perquisites for the permits, yet the ministry has not issued them.
