Indonesia gets higher U.S. farm credit
JAKARTA (JP): The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) said that it had increased export credit for Indonesia to buy farm products from the country by US$100 million to total $750 million for the 2001 fiscal year.
The terms of the credit, which is better known as the Commodity Credit Corporation's Export Credit Guarantee Program (GSM-102) has also been extended from two years to three years, the department said in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
"Any bank approved by the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) in Indonesia is eligible. Exporters are advised to obtain from their foreign buyer the name of the CCC-approved foreign bank that will be opening the letter of credit," the department said.
When asked for further clarification, the agriculture counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta Kent Sisson told The Post that the additional $100 million had been provided because the initial credit allocation of $650 million had been used up as of early June.
Kent said that the additional credit was available until the end of the U.S. government's fiscal year on Sept. 30.
The U.S. government launched the GSM-102 program in 1998 to enable the crisis-hit Asian countries, including Indonesia, to keep importing farm products from the country despite the crisis, which made it difficult for them to secure credit from local banks.
Food and agriculture commodities imported by Indonesia from the U.S. include soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton and soybean meal.
The USDA data was quoted by Reuters as saying that Indonesia had used some $294.3 million of the $650 million total credit to import oilseed, some $179.20 million for protein meals, $89.30 million for wheat and wheat flour and $52.20 million for grain used as feed.
According to Kent, Indonesia was the world's largest user of the GSM-102 credit program.
"Indonesian importers have been very active in using this program to import raw materials for food, agriculture and textile industries," he said. (11)