WFP will appeal for food aid for Indonesia

WFP will appeal for food aid for Indonesia

TOKYO (Reuters): The World Food Program (WFP) will appeal before the end of this month for about two million tonnes of food aid for Indonesia, WFP executive director Catherine Bertini said yesterday.

Bertini said Indonesia would need 3.5 million tons of food to feed its people in the next 12 months and Jakarta would be able to provide 1.5 million tons from its own production, Bertini said.

"We are now putting our plan together. Within the next two weeks at the latest, it will be ready," Bertini told Reuters in an interview in Tokyo.

"We will ask for somewhere less than two million tons," she said.

In the international appeal, the WFP would also propose "food for work" for rehabilitation of farmers, food for pregnant women, infants, and breast-feeding women, she said.

Bertini was in Tokyo on a two-day visit after winding up a four-day tour last week of famine-stricken North Korea.

In a joint report released last week, the WFP and the UN Food and Agricultural Organizations (FAO) said Indonesia would face a "record" food deficit as a result of reduced harvests.

The report said about 7.5 million Indonesians in 15 provinces could go through acute food shortages during the upcoming dry season.

However Bertini said that while the short-term food outlook was bleak, she was optimistic Indonesia could return to self- sufficiency within a few years.

"It shouldn't be a long term issue. But it depends in part on the weather and also clearly on the state of the Indonesian economy," she said.

"It's not a structural problem that will be there for years to come. They should be able to return to self sufficiency... in a few years, I hope."

Apart from the international appeal, the UN food agency would urge other countries to make food contributions through bilateral channels, Bertini said.