Rain prevents Soeharto inaugurating Ciamis plant

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)