Jakarta, Sept 13 (ANTARA) - The logistics board, Bulog, as a state agency charged with the task of strengthening food resilience and stabilizing food prices, should purchase rice from the farmers instead of importing the commodity too much.
Yet, so far the state logistics agency seems to be more aggressive in importing rice rather than increasing its stocks from purchasing farmers' production. "As it is aggressively importing rice, Bulog could not be differentiated with importers or traders," Rofi Munawar, a member of the House of Representatives (DPR)'s Commission IV on Agricultural affairs, said.
Bulog imports rice too often while the data on the need to import rice it uses to purchase the commodity abroad does not accord with the data of the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) or the ministry of Agriculture.
After all, it has just decided only recently to import some 300 thousands tons of rice from Thailand which are expected to arrive in Indonesia in October 2011. This is another Bulog step in importing rice, after if imported 500 thousand tons from Vietnam last July.
According to legislator Rofi Munawar, the rice import policy is inconsistent with the instruction of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on the plan to achieve rice surplus of 10 tons in 2015.
The president's target should be realized through increasing stocks by buying rice from the farmers. Moreover, the 2012 draft state budget has set aside Rp41.9 trillion for the strengthening of the country's food resilience.
"We think that Bulog has continued to carry out rice imports along the year, regardless of a grand harvest at home. Bulog's mistake is that it places its price stabilizer function as an import stabilizer," Rofi said.
In an inspection to East Java's Bulog warehouse, the House Commission IV members found that of the 290 thousand tons of rice stocks there, only about 1,000 tons were rice purchased from farmers at home. The remaining 289 thousand tons were rice imported from overseas.
The BPS recorded that in the January-June 2011 period Indonesia's food imports reached US$5.36 billion. In 2011, the government allows a rice import quota of 1.5 million tons. The realization of this rice import will be carried out until 2012. At present, a total of 3,850 tons of rice have arrived. If all rice imports are taken into account together, the volumes of rice imports this year reached 800,000 tons.
This is ironical because the government has decided to stop rice imports as of March 31, 2011. Its reason that time was that rice harvests were going on, while on national scale stocks were also adequate or for enough for six months ahead.
But that condition did not last long as four months later namely in August Bulog imported 500 thousand tons of rice from Vietnam, which arrived through 20 ports in Indonesia. It again continued importing another 300 thousand tons from Thailand.
"Bulog at present can actually operate with reference to a Presidential Instruction No. 8/2011 where it can purchase farmers' rice without problems because it could follow the market price based on the BPS monitoring," Rofi said.
Yet, facts in the fields showed otherwise which indicated that the implementation of the presidential instruction was less effective.
"The Bulog warehouses should have been filled with rice bought from local farmers. But what happened is different as local rice suffered a lot while the imported one dominates stocks," the legislator who is member of the Prosperous Justice Party faction (FPKS) said.
He said that it was not impossible that other warehouses of Bulog in other parts of the country were also filled with imported rice. And if this happened it reflected the lack of seriousness of Bulog in purchasing the farmers rice at home.
In the meantime, the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) is drafting a middle-term policy and evaluation. It will also regard an evaluation on Presidential Instruction No. 5 / 2011 on the safeguarding of national rice production in the face of extreme climate conditions.
"Ahead, we have to take into account the limited land for the cultivation of rice and other food crops like maize, soybean and peanut. It would be difficult to realize to increase production by expanding land ," Director for Food and Agricultural Affairs of the Ministry of National Development Planning Nono Rusono said.
He said that based on BPS's forecast II, the country this year is expected to enjoy a rice production surplus of 1.59 million tons. National rice production target this year is set at 43.9 million.
"Surplus was expected to occur because of the increase in crop harvest areas and productivity," Nono Rusono said. But due to a long drought, rice production in the September - December 2011 period was expected to drop by 4.44 percent.
Therefore, the government, in its efforts to realize its plan to have a 10 million tons of rice surplus in 2015, is providing guidance, applying seedling technology, water management, drought anticipation, pest control and minimizing post-harvest depreciation.
Presidential Instruction No. 5 / 2011 was issued as part of the government's efforts to secure national unhulled rice and to take quick response to an extreme climate condition. ***5***
(T.A014/A/H-NG/00:10/H-YH) 14-09-2011 00:18:3
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