Govt in the dark on contaminated wheat purchase

Rendi A. Witular The Jakarta Post Jakarta

The government vowed that it would try not to allow the import of contaminated Australian wheat, which has been recently rejected by a Pakistani buyer and reportedly sold to Indonesia after an alleged fungal infection was found.

Ministry of Agriculture's secretary general Memed Gunawan told The Jakarta Post on Friday that the ministry had not yet received any information on whether such imports had taken place here.

"We haven't received such a report yet, but you can check directly with the Agricultural Quarantine Agency. If there is evidence of fungal diseases in the wheat, we will automatically reject it," said Memed.

Lailatul, a staff member at the crop quarantine division of the Agricultural Quarantine Agency, said that his office would immediately inspect imported wheat if there was suspicion it had been contaminated.

A recent report by AFP said that Indonesian buyers were among those planning to buy Australian wheat that has been rejected by Tradesman International, a Pakistani company, after locally administered tests detected Karnal bunt disease, which is harmful to humans.

Other countries that decided to import the wheat shipment, which is valued at around US$23 million, are Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates. Australian tests have cleared the wheat of the alleged fungal infection.

Elsewhere, chief commercial officer of flour producer PT Bogasari Flour Mills, Philip S. Purnama, told the Post that the Pakistani firm had indeed offered the wheat to Bogasari and other local companies that are part of the Indonesian Flour Producers Association (Aptindo).

But none of the local companies decided to accept the offer, because of the disease, he said.

"We have been offered the wheat, but we have never accepted it. Bogasari has never bought wheat from a Pakistani trader... We directly import wheat from Australia, transported by our own vessels," said Philip.

He explained that Bogasari had received a guarantee letter from the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) on March 12, stating that Karnal bunt had never been detected in Australia.

The company, which is a unit of the world's largest instant noodle producer PT Indofood Sukses Makmur, is one of the country's largest wheat importers.