Indonesia gets higher U.S. farm credit

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)