Government aims to focus on food security: Prakosa

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Agriculture Muhammad Prakosa said on Monday his programs for the year 2000 would concentrate on food security and agribusiness development.

"We will further encourage rice cultivation to regain food self-sufficiency," he told House Commission III for agriculture.

He said that Indonesia's per capita rice consumption averaged 135 kilograms.

With a population of 207 million, Indonesia achieved food self-sufficiency in 1985, but became dependent on imports from the late 1980s.

According to the National Logistics Agency, Indonesia imported 5.7 million metric tons of rice last year and 1.7 million tons in the first nine months of this year.

"The food security program will also include diversification of staple foods into such crops as corn and various tuber plants to prevent too heavy a dependency on rice," said Prakosa, who took up the agriculture portfolio late last month.

He estimated that domestic production combined with imported stocks would be sufficient to meet consumption needs until the end of the first quarter of next year.

Prakosa said unhusked rice production next year was expected to reach 51 million tons, a 2.26 percent increase from this year's output.

He set a corn production target for next year at 10.5 million tons and soybean at 1.5 million tons.

He said 22 million families, or 58 percent of the total population, depended on the agricultural sector for their livelihood.

The agribusiness program would focus on smallholders through an integrated approach encompassing production and marketing, he said.

"We will still provide subsidies for seeds for rice and secondary food crops, fertilizer and farm credit."

Referring to foreign assistance, Prakosa said foreign aid disbursement to the agricultural sector from April to September this year totaled US$10.35 million or 13.49 percent of the budgeted total of $76.72 million.

He blamed the slow foreign project implementation on inadequate counterpart funding, technical difficulties and bureaucratic hurdles.

Prakosa said his ministry would require a development budget of Rp 1.66 trillion (US$237 million) in the next fiscal year which will only last for nine months starting in April. He said the contracted year was because the government would base its budget on the calendar year beginning in January, 2001.

He said Rp 967.4 billion of the development fund was projected to be raised from foreign aid. (06)