Bulog food stocks sufficient until January: Kalla

JAKARTA (JP): Food supplies such as rice, sugar, wheat flour and soybean are sufficient to meet increasing demand during Christmas, New Year and Idul Fitri holidays, Jusuf Kalla, head of the State Logistics Agency (Bulog), said on Wednesday.

Kalla, who is also the minister of trade and industry, told a hearing with House of Representatives Commission III for agriculture and forestry that Bulog had 1.5 million metric tons of rice on hand.

"With additional supplies from domestic harvests and imports, stock is estimated to be adequate for Bulog's market operations for the next three months," Kalla said.

He said the agency's domestic rice procurement up to this month was estimated at 2.4 million tons and imports totaled 1.4 million tons.

"Domestic procurement was 10 times more than last year, while imports declined 75 percent," he added.

The sharp increase in the 1999 rice procurement was attributed to higher domestic output, according to Kalla.

He added that several provinces like Aceh, South Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, South East Sulawesi and Bali were still supplying between 1,500 tons to 2,000 tons daily to the market.

In 1998, Indonesia had to import 5.9 million tons of rice due to a sharp fall in domestic output due to unfavorable climatic conditions, notably the prolonged dry season.

He predicted that next year's domestic rice procurement would not be much different from this year's volume of 2.4 million tons as the national output would most likely remain stagnant.

Kalla added that Indonesia also imported 856,879 tons of rice this year under loan and grant programs from Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Italy and Japan.

He said the government and the International Monetary Fund were still assessing the level of import tax to be imposed on rice, but said a range of 30 percent to 40 percent would be adequate.

Kalla argued that too high import tax would trigger inflation but too low a tax would hurt local farmers.

According to Kalla, the government will most likely maintain the floor price of rice at last year's level of between Rp 1,400 to Rp 1,500 per kilogram (for unhusked rice) because the price range had almost reached the level of the international market.

Kalla quoted data from the Indonesian Sugar Council as showing that domestic sugar stocks at factories now amounted to 600,000 tons, which would be sufficient to meet demand until January.

He added that wheat flour and wheat grain stocks were estimated at 69,250 tons and 398,000 tons respectively and an additional supply of 250,000 tons was expected to arrive within the next three months.

Kalla said Bulog still had 20,000 tons of soybean stock as of last month and private companies held another 130,000 tons which were estimated to be sufficient to fulfill demand until January. (06)