Sleman to distribute 20,000 goats

YOGYAKARTA: As part of its poverty alleviation and community empowerment programs, the government of Sleman regency is planning to distribute a total 20,000 goats this year to young farmers in its villages, to be further bred for meat.

"We have started buying some 300 goats a day from outside Sleman," Regent Ibnu Subiyanto said here on Wednesday.

Ibnu added that the same amount of goats would also be provided by the regental government through its Agricultural and Forestry Office annually for the next four years.

In other words, a total of about 100,000 goats would be distributed over five years.

"By then we expect to have some 800,000 goats in the region, approximately the same as our population total here," Ibnu said.

Ibnu, whose term is to end this year, said that one of the keys to success in improving the regental economy was to increase the money in circulation, even at village level.

The distribution of goats, he said, which were provided as a form of rolling capital to young village farmers, was a way of stimulating economic activity in the villages. --JP