Transportation Ministry to store Bulog's rice imports

Transportation Ministry to store Bulog's rice imports

JAKARTA (JP): The Ministry of Transportation said yesterday
that the National Logistics Agency (Bulog) can use the port's
warehouses to store its rice imports which have been held up on
waiting vessels and causing congestion in local seaports.

Director General of Sea Transportation Soentoro said in a
hearing with Commission V of the House of Representatives here
yesterday that the vessels docked in Jakarta's Tanjung Priok Port
can unload and store their rice in the port's warehouses.

Soentoro's remarks came in response to recent news reports
that thousands of tons of rice are being held up on vessels which
could not berth at Tanjung Priok. Tanjung Priok's management,
added the reports, has been unable to handle the inflow of goods.

Soentoro has said that the problem could be alleviated by
using the port's facilities if the warehouses of Bulog, which
manages the country's rice stocks, are unable to hold the
incoming rice.

"Unloading a vessel, storing goods at the port's warehouses
and transporting them by trucks is a standard cargo-handling
procedure," he said.

"But now people want to unload the cargo immediately onto
trucks... And when the trucks are not ready, port congestion
occurs," he told the commission for transportation,
telecommunications and public works affairs.

Soentoro pointed out that the port does not impose a fee on
goods stocked at storehouses for the first five days.

"So the terms are actually very friendly... But I don't know
why the agency is not interested," he told reporters after the
hearing.

Reliable sources say that Bulog's storehouses are currently
packed with goods owned by the Goro retail store -- a subsidiary
of the Humpuss Group -- and thus unable to accommodate the rice
imports.

Executives of Goro and Humpuss were unavailable for
confirmation yesterday.

Soentoro explained yesterday that since 1995, when Bulog began
importing rice, he has asked the agency to distribute incoming
cargo to various ports in Cirebon and Banten in West Java,
Semarang in Central Java and Surabaya in East Java.

"I tried telling them to avoid using only Tanjung Priok," he
said.

"Now I hear that Bulog's storehouses are full and they are
short of trucks." (pwn)