Bulog announces lower annual financial surplus

JAKARTA (JP): The National Logistics Agency (Bulog) yesterday announced a financial surplus of Rp 13.6 billion (US$5.91 million) for the 1995/1996 fiscal year, down from Rp 133 billion in 1994/1995.

Bulog Chief Beddu Amang said despite the drop, Bulog was better off than it was three years ago, when it suffered a Rp 115 billion deficit in 1993/1994.

"The agency's accumulative surplus over the last three years stands at around Rp 28 billion," Beddu told reporters after receiving a bill of clean (unqualified) opinion from the Development Finance Comptroller for the agency.

Beddu said the drop in Bulog's surplus resulted from the agency's market and buffer-stocking operations.

"Bulog is a non-profit agency responsible for keeping the stability of foodstuff prices," he said. "Our main job is stabilization, not profit seeking."

He said the finance comptroller audited not only the agency's financial records but its market and buffer-stocking operations as well.

"On the one hand, it is safe to have large stocks. On the other, it is very costly to store foodstuff," he said.

Bulog was set up in 1967 to control the distribution of several important commodities, assure food security and maintain price stability through market operations and buffer-stocking mechanisms.

The government has assigned the agency as the sole authority to import and distribute rice and other agricultural commodities such as sugar, wheat, corn and soybean.

Beddu said yesterday Bulog was planning to open new warehouses in remote areas to guarantee that food supplies reached people there. "President Soeharto gave us this instruction earlier this month," he said.

Beddu said Bulog would establish new warehouses in areas where it had no warehouse access or where it rented warehouses from state-owned firms and private companies.

In the first phase of the project, 36 warehouses would be built or rented in 14 provinces outside Java. Most of the warehouses would be in the eastern part of Indonesia, he said.

The warehouses would have a capacity of 500 tons to 1,000 tons each and would store essential commodities controlled by Bulog. An investment of Rp 20 billion, from Bulog's current surplus, would be used for the first phase which is expected to be completed next year. According to Beddu, the project is already underway.

Beddu said the warehouses were particularly important to civil servants and members of the Armed Forces, many of whom must travel miles to Bulog warehouses for their monthly allocation of rice.

They have to pay travel expenses and carry the supplies on their own. "Sometimes they bring only half of their allocated rice home; the other half is spent on travel expenses," he said.

Beddu said that apart from the Rp 20 billion used to build the new warehouses, Bulog would provide another Rp 5 billion each year to cover the costs of transporting commodities to the new warehouses. (pwn)