Bulog continues to import rice ignoring unhappy local farmers

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

State Logistics Agency, PT Bulog began importing rice from Vietnam despite some controversy over the Ministry of Trade's decision, made on Nov. 1, to temporarily lift the rice import ban, in order to avert a shortage and keep prices of the staple food affordable for the general public.

Bulog, the government's commodity regulator, will distribute the 68,900 tons of a total of 250,000 tons of imported rice to eight areas in the country, mostly outside of Java island, where there are potential shortages.

"It is a government-to-government policy on implementing the previous MOU (memorandum of understanding) on rice imports," Bulog president director Widjanarko Puspoyo said on Monday.

The trade ministry had banned rice imports, ostensibly to protect local farmers. However, the policy has a stipulation that the ban be lifted if Bulog has a stock of below one million tons, or the price of medium-class rice has risen above Rp 3,500 per kilogram.

The ministry allowed Bulog to import up to 250,000 tons of rice to shore up its inventory and keep it stable through January 2006.

Widjanarko argued that with the current stock of 1.2 million tons, it could decrease as it had to disburse between 180,000 tons and 200,000 tons of rice for the poor twice this month.

He added that the price of medium-class rice had risen to above Rp 3,600 per kilogram. "I am worried that farmers will not be able to produce the estimated target of 2.25 million tons of rice due to droughts," he explained.

But Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyantono disagrees, saying the pricing data used by Bulog, supplied by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), is different from his ministry's findings.

"Bulog's data, obtained from BPS, included top-class rice prices into medium-class prices. That caused the price to appear high," he was quoted as saying by Antara news agency.

Anton further argued that rice imports could be done after there were results from "market operations" by the trade ministry. "There have been no 'market operations', but they suddenly imported rice."

He emphasized that there should be no more importation of rice.