Bulog set to resume rice imports soon

JAKARTA (JP): The State Logistics Agency (Bulog) said on Friday it would soon resume importing rice in anticipation of declining domestic supplies in the coming months.

Chairman of the agency's foreign procurement department Mohamad Ismet said his office would open the tender for the rice imports later this month.

He declined to disclose the quantity of rice in the tendering process.

"We are still calculating the volume of the existing rice stocks."

Ismet, who is also chairman of the agency's tendering committee, said the agency would use funds provided by the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) to procure the rice through a tendering process.

He said IDB had provided US$194 million in financial aid, of which approximately $63 million had been used, among other things, to procure staples.

"The imported rice would come from Egypt, Pakistan, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, China and Taiwan."

A source at Bulog said the agency postponed its rice tender for 75,000 tons of rice, originally scheduled for June, because it was reassessing local supplies.

Ismet said rice stocks imported in the 1998/1999 fiscal year had run out, and the agency needed to replenish its supplies.

The agency has procured about 1.4 million tons of rice from local farmers, part of the two million tons targeted for this year.

He said rice stocks were expected to plunge in September and December due to inadequate local supplies.

Additional supplies would only enter the market in January when the harvest season started, he said.

Ismet said the government imported more than five million tons of rice in the 1998/1999 fiscal year, which ended in March. More than half of that amount was financed by foreign grants and loans.

The government has projected that the country will need to import another 3 million tons this fiscal year.

However, Minister of Industry and Trade Rahardi Ramelan said Bulog was still buying rice from local farmers to boost its stocks.

Rahardi, also the chairman of Bulog, remained tightlipped when he was asked whether the agency had any plans to import rice, only saying it was "his secret".

Rahardi said the country's domestic supply of rice currently stood at 2.8 million tons.(gis)