970,000 tons of imported rice to arrive soon

970,000 tons of imported rice to arrive soon

JAKARTA (JP): At least 970,000 tons of rice imported by the
State Logistics Agency (Bulog) will arrive in several ports
throughout the country by the end of the year, Minister of
Industry and Trade Rahardi Ramelan has said.

Rahardi, who is also Bulog's acting chairman, said that the
agency has received the names of the ships that will deliver the
rice to the Indonesian ports in November and December.

"With the notification of their readiness to transport the
rice, I expect that our rice stock for the upcoming Christmas,
New Year, Ramadhan, Idul Fitri and Imlek (the Chinese New Year)
festivities, will be more than enough to meet the demand,"
Rahardi told a press conference on Thursday.

He added that the rice had been procured from several
countries under government to government agreements regarding
food aid and commercial purchases.

Rahardi said that the government has secured import contracts
and aid commitments for 3.15 million tons of rice, or nearly 80
percent of the 4.1 million tons which will be procured by the
government from overseas markets during the year, as of October.

The minister, however, did not disclose the total volume of
rice which had been shipped to Indonesia this year.

Earlier this year, the government said that it planned to
import 4.1 million tons of rice in the 1998/1999 fiscal year,
which ended in March, to meet the shortage in supply caused by
harvest failures resulting from a prolonged drought.

Rahardi said that Bulog's rice stocks stood at 2.38 million
metric tons as of the end of October, enough to meet the domestic
demand until the end of this year.

State Minister of Food Affairs and Horticulture A.M. Saefuddin
said Bulog's rice stock could reach 3.74 million tons by the end
of this year, far above the safe stock target of 2.5 million tons
set by the Central Bureau of Statistics.

Speaking at the same press conference, Saefuddin said that the
government was going to expand its scheme to provide the poor
with heavily-subsidized rice in a bid to anticipate the soaring
price of rice during the December/January low-harvest period.

"Starting next month the low-priced rice allocated for the
poorest families will be raised to 20 kilograms every month per
family, and the price will remain Rp 1,000 per kg," he said.

In July, the government launched a program to provide the
country's poorest families with 10 kg of medium-quality rice
every month for Rp 1,000 per kg. The same grade of rice is sold
for Rp 2,500 per kg in the market.

The program, called the special market operation, is designed
to cover at least 7.5 million families across the country.

Rahardi said that the government has distributed over 125,000
tons of the subsidized rice to over 10 million of the poorest
families as of Nov. 12.

"The program will end in March of next year when the condition
of our food production is back to normal," he said. (gis)