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Indonesia to accelerate land certification
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A worker checks fresh oil palm fruit being transported on a truck in Pangkalan Bun, East Kalimantan. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
O
ne of the reasons hampering the acceleration of the oil palm tree replanting program is the fact that many plots still have unclear legal status, Agrarian and Land Spatial Planning Minister Sofyan Djalil said on Thursday.
For that reason, the government aims to distribute five million free land certificates by the end of the year to ensure that the replanting efforts can run smoothly and that farmers’ productivity can be improved.
Last month, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo launched an oil palm tree replanting program in Musi Banyuasin, South Sumatra. Out of the 4,447-hectare plantation area, only 2,836 ha had been cleared.
“The president instructed [me] to issue five million land certificates in 2017, seven million in 2018 and nine million in 2019,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the 13th Indonesian Palm Oil Conference in Bali.
Sofyan, however, admitted that currently the ministry had only issued 1.7 to 1.8 million land certificates.
“It doesn’t mean that the figure represents one third of the total target. The longest process in issuing land certificates is the data collection process in the field. The certificate issuance is only 15 percent of the overall work,” he claimed.
The Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association said oil palm plantations owned by local growers covered 43 percent of 11.7 million hectares of the total oil palm plantations in Indonesia. (bbn)
