Goverment urged to boost productivity of corn farmers

Goverment urged to boost productivity of corn farmers

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Indonesian Feed Miller Association welcomed the government's
plan to raise import tariffs on corn products saying such a move
would help encourage local farmers to plant more corn.

"We (the association) in principle agree to the plan as long
as the government has already come up with an integrated policy
for boosting local farmers' productivity," Boediarto Soebijanto,
chairman of the association told reporters on Monday.

He said that without measures to boost the productivity of
local corn farmers, the new import tariff plan could cause a
shortage of the commodity at home, which would eventually hurt
the animal feed industry.

Agriculture minister Bungaran Saragih earlier said that the
government would soon raise import tariffs on several strategic
agricultural products, including corn, rice, sugar and soybeans
in a bid to protect local farmers from cheaper imported products.

Indonesia currently sets a zero percent import tariff on both
corn and soybeans, while it imposes a 30 percent tariff on rice
and tariffs of between 20 percent and 25 percent on sugar.

"We hope the planned import tariffs on corn products will not
exceed 10 percent," Boediarto said.

Boediarto also urged the government to use the money collected
from the import tariffs for financing the construction of the
necessary infrastructure for helping to boost domestic corn
production.

He said that Indonesia would import some 1.2 million tons of
corn this year to meet a surge in demand from the country's
animal feed industries and food producers.

"We are still unable to fulfill domestic demand. We have to
import at least one million tons every year, but in the long term
we must make efforts to reduce corn imports," he said.

Indonesia imports corn from China, the United States and
Brazil. Indonesia imported some 591,056 tons of corn in 1999, 1.4
million tons in 2000 and 1 million tons last year.

Data from the association showed that demand for corn products
would continue to increase in the years to come.

It said that the country's animal feed industry was expected
to consume some 3.3 million tons of corn this year, up slightly
from 2.9 million tons in 2001.

The Central Bureau of Statistics has predicted that the
country's corn output will increase by 2.17 percent from 9.35
million tons in 2001 due to the expansion of the area under the
crop.

Meanwhile, Bungaran predicted that corn output would reach 12
million tons in 2003, up from this year's target of 11.5 million.