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)