GOVERNMENT MUST BUILD SELF RELIANCE IN FOOD

While other countries were busily consolidating their stock of food, Indonesia was still struggling to escape from importing. Apparently Indonesia was becoming less and less independent in food because most of the foods were imported. High dependency on import degraded the quality of development which the nation was so proud about. What’s more, food importing reduced the opportunity to uphold dignity of local farmers.

               

Disharmony of decision makers at the macro and micro sector finally created supply demand gap which was taken advantage of by profit seekers who sent for food commodities from other countries. “It seems most illogical that in Indonesia, a fertile land with a wealth of natural resources, the farmers are still having problem” Anton J. Supit, Chairman of the Indonesian Poultry Association remarked in Jakarta on Friday [22/3]. Therefore, Anton believed that the Government must immediately realize self-reliance in food to anticipate the negative impact of economic growth supported by import so far. Although Indonesia scored growth of above 6% in the past % years, the growth did not represent Indonesia’s economy because it relied on import. This means that Indonesia’s growth belonged to the exporter country. The result was that growth would contract even to the extent of minus in times when the state ran short of fund for financing import.

               

Anton proposed that the Government built self-reliance in food production and national food industry. To enhance self reliance in industries of essential commodities like food, clothing, and shelter the Government must exempt taxes that burdened companies so they could down press high cost economy. As know, Indonesia’s economic growth had been propelled by domestic consumption which constituted around 60%; but most of the consumption originated from import including import of food which amounted to Rp 100 trillion a year.

               

Anton reminded how important self-reliance in food was. He showed as an example that in less than one year that the people had to cope with high price just to obtain soy, beef, and garlic. Evidently the Government was powerless in controlling prices of those commodities. There were many lessons top learn from those cases. Apparently distribution and pricing of those commodities were purely controlled by the market. The Government was too late to anticipate on the upstream or downstream side.

               

Anton said that the case of Soy under production indicated that soy plantation business was unappealing to farmers. Production continued to slump as there was no effort to save it. The nation was getting more dependent on import. In the case of beef scarcity, the public was already aware that I was not purely a case of trading but there was fraudulence in it. The case proved that price increase was not purely a case of production and consumption this was not to mention the case of garlic and onions the price of which suddenly soared up.

               

The question arose why some commodity prices soared up drastically. All these years’ commodity prices had been stable with no outburst. The public also questioned the Government’s role in managing commodity trading. At upstream phase the Ministry of Agriculture should have monitored possible production disturbances like foul weather, pest etc. So in case of emergency import could have been exercised sooner. “Today the agriculture sector seems to be left unattended by the provincial Governments” Anton remarked. (SS)

Business News - March 27,2013