Bulog urged to ensure food supplies during elections

Bulog urged to ensure food supplies during elections

JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto ordered the National
Logistics Agency (Bulog) yesterday to ensure the country had
enough food supplies for the coming general elections.

Bulog chief Beddu Amang, after meeting with Soeharto, said the
President asked him to pay special attention to remote regions
like Irian Jaya, Maluku, East Timor, East Nusa Tenggara and
Kalimantan.

"We must make sure that regions that have no (rice) harvest or
production still get the supplies they need, particularly in the
months toward the general elections," Beddu said.

Indonesia will hold its seventh general election on May 29.
The last six, which were held over the past 30 years, were won by
the ruling Golkar and Soeharto has been continually re-elected
president.

Beddu said that as far as food security was concerned,
Indonesia was ready for the elections despite the country going
through a dry season.

Beddu said national rice stocks were at 2.4 million tons.

"This is quite a lot and harvests are still going on
throughout the country," he said.

He said Bulog's rice procurements from farmers had reached
525,000 tons for the first three months of the year.

"This is a record compared to the same period in the last six
years," he said.

In the January to March period last year Bulog's domestic rice
procurement was 200,000 tons. It was 72,000 tons in 1995, 63,000
tons in 1994, 284,000 tons in 1993 and 476,000 tons in 1992.

Indonesia was the world's biggest rice importer before it
reached rice self-sufficiency in 1984.

But since 1994 it has had to rely partly on imports when
droughts and plant diseases affected harvests.

Beddu said his agency also had sufficient supplies of other
foods including flour, soybean and sugar, all of which were
regulated by Bulog through its buffer mechanisms.

"The President has ordered the monitoring of price
developments and supplies," Beddu said. (pwn)