Rain prevents Soeharto inaugurating Ciamis plant

JAKARTA (JP): Heavy rains barred President Soeharto from inaugurating yesterday an integrated phosphate mining and processing plant owned by PT Istana Kanematsu Indonesia (IKI) in Ciamis, West Java.

"President Soeharto apologized to the people who had made preparations for welcoming him," State Minister/State Secretary Moerdiono, who accompanied Soeharto, told journalists.

He said the President had flown from here to Bandung, the capital city of West Java, by plane and then took a helicopter to Ciamis, some 150 kilometers southeast of Bandung.

However, the helicopter could not land at the site of the inauguration ceremony because of heavy rain and lighting. Instead, it landed on an airstrip in the town of Ciamis.

After waiting 45 minutes, with the weather showing little sign of improvement, Soeharto decided to fly back to Bandung using the same helicopter.

"The decision to return to Hussein Sastranegara Airport (in Bandung) was taken on the grounds that if the President's entourage waited too long in Ciamis, the helicopter might not be able to return to Bandung because of worsening weather," Moerdiono said.

Soeharto was originally scheduled to officially inaugurate the US$55.5 million phosphate mining and processing plant owned by PT IKI yesterday morning.

PT IKI is a joint venture firm 60 percent owned by PT Elang Istanamas of Indonesia and 40 percent by Kanematsu Corp. of Japan.

PT IKI president Julindo S.A. said at the ceremony that his company's integrated plant has an annual production capacity of 600,000 to 720,000 tons of kaptan phosphate and kaptan super phosphate, both used as fertilizer.

He explained that the phosphate fertilizer is especially important for peat farming lands, which are abundant in islands outside Java.

In his written speech, read out by Minister of Mines and Energy Ida Bagus Sudjana, Soeharto said it is important to develop farming lands outside Java, Bali, the Western part of Sumatra and Minahasa area in North Sulawesi to meet the increasing domestic demand for rice.

However, Soeharto recognized that lands outside those areas are mostly not fertile, considering that they contain a high decree of acids. Consequently, they need phosphate fertilizer to reduce their acidity levels to make them fertile.

"Therefore, besides the TSP fertilizer that we have produced for the past 20 years, we also need phosphate fertilizer like the kaptan super phosphate produced by this factory," Soeharto said.

The government has decided to establish new farming fields in Kalimantan, which involves the conversion of one million hectares of peat land in Central Kalimantan into 638,000 hectares of rice fields. The remaining 362,000 hectares will be used for horticulture, plantations, conservation areas, housing and reservoirs.

"We realize that without the success of agricultural development, our economy will continue to be undermined by a large volume of rice imports," Soeharto said. "Without the success of our agricultural development, most of our people will face difficulties in enhancing their welfare and our industry will not achieve major improvement."

The President welcomed the inauguration of the phosphate plant, which he said will reduce the country's dependence on imported phosphates.

Although the amount of phosphate fertilizer produced by PT IKI's plant represents only a small portion of the national demand for phosphate of almost 6 million tons per annum, it is a pioneer in the mining and processing of phosphate in the country, Soeharto said.

Indonesia has been considered to have little phosphate reserves. The relatively large reserves of phosphate in Ciamis, however, were found by the state Agency for Technology Assessment and Application, in cooperation with the French Bureau for Geology and Mineral Research. (rid)