Forests open to new oil palm plantations

JAKARTA (JP): A new decree permits plantation companies to establish oil palm estates in forest areas outside Riau and North Sumatra.

Minister of Forestry and Plantations Sumahadi said in the decree, dated April 8, that the forests must be located in nonforestry planting areas and should be unoccupied or idle land of more than 10,000 hectares.

The decree forbids companies to develop oil palm plantations on small islands with widths of less than 10 square kilometers.

Allocated land for oil palm plantations should not be more than 300 meters above sea level and have a maximum slope of 25 percent.

The land should get 1,750 millimeters to 4,000 millimeters of rainfall annually, with the average temperature ranging between 24 and 29 degrees Celcius.

Soil depth should be more than 100 centimeters for mineral land and less than 200 centimeters for peat.

"But the criteria will not apply in North Sumatra and Riau, which have been closed to new plantations," Sumahadi told the media after a meeting with executives of forest concession holders and plantation firms last week.

Last month, the government announced that North Sumatra and Riau provinces were barred from new plantation developments to prevent a further decline in their forests.

Sumahadi said new investment in the plantation sector would be directed to the country's eastern provinces where land resources remained abundant.

"Forest areas in North Sumatra and Riau are almost fully utilized. It is better and commercially more viable for new investors to open plantations in eastern Indonesia," he said.

He added that the new decree was also aimed at convincing foreign investors sector that developing palm oil in Indonesia was profitable.

The government, following its agreement with the International Monetary Fund in January, revoked a ban on new foreign investment in the palm oil industry. It was imposed last year in a bid to protect domestic companies and prevent excessive land acquisition by foreigners.

Sumahadi said his ministry had converted 3.4 million hectares of forests into plantation areas, 2.4 million of which were palm oil estates.

He said his ministry had allocated more than four million hectares of forests for oil palm plantations until 2000. (gis)