Rice price to remain volatile until April: Soleh

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Agriculture Soleh Solahuddin admitted yesterday that the market price of rice was likely to remain volatile until the next major harvest in April.

He claimed that despite the government's best efforts, it would not be able to stabilize the price of the staple commodity due to a poor harvest this year, inefficient distribution of fertilizer and seeds, and ineffective marketing of imported rice.

He added that smuggling rice into neighboring countries, where it can fetch a higher price, was another major factor affecting supply on the domestic market.

"There's no magic solution to lowering prices other than increasing the supply on the domestic market," Soleh said after meeting with President B.J. Habibie at the Bina Graha presidential office.

When asked why he predicted that the price of rice would return to something approaching normality next March and April, he replied: "Between 50 percent and 60 percent of our annual national rice production is harvested in those months".

The market price has doubled in the past three weeks to about Rp 4,000 per kilogram for medium quality rice.

For some inexplicable reason Soleh attempted to dismiss the high price as a problem which primarily affected city dwellers and not those living in rural areas.

"Only people in cities like us want the price to decrease, but farmers are happy because they have long suffered from problems caused by low prices," remarked Soleh, who is a former rector of Bogor Institute of Agriculture.

According to Soleh, the government is also planning to add an additional one million tons of rice to the 3.1 million tons which it has already stated it will import this year.

The national rice requirement this year is expected to be just over 31 million tons.

Soleh then laid down the basic fact that Indonesia's high demand for rice would probably be an unending dilemma from now on because the country was now the world's largest consumer of rice.

"We are the biggest rice eaters at 132 kilograms per capita per year," Soleh noted.

Under the leadership of former president Soeharto, critics often described rice as a political commodity which the success of the government's national development program rested on.

Indonesia proudly declared itself to be self-sufficient in rice in the mid-1980s.

However in recent months the public has been made aware of a dire need to import rice because of last year's prolonged drought.

Soleh even acknowledged yesterday that in the past the government would ensure that the price of rice fell in the run-up to important national or political events.

"But we can no longer do that," he remarked. (prb)