Government Procures Agricultural Machinery of PTPN XIII To Support Program of Domestic-Product Utilization Enhancement

The Government planned to facilitate agricultural machinery to fulfill domestic need especially for PT Perkebunan Nusantara (PT PN) XIII in west Kalimantan region. Subagyo, Director General of Domestic Trading, the Ministry of Trade disclosed to Business News Friday (25/6). The plan to procure such needs was to support the Program of Domestic-Product Utilization (P3DN).

“On the one hand we have our industry and the kind of product being produced are exactly those needed by companies, which are State Owned Companies (BUMN). Supposedly the BUMN who require the products need not to import them because they are being locally produced.

We are trying to facilitate the need and connect producer and buyer. We will talk this matter over with the Ministry of Trade and Ministry of Industry who know about the details of the kinds of agricultural products needed for the project.

We want to make sure that products which are produced at home need not be imported, as long as the local industry need them and this will have the impact of strengthening product competitiveness. The P3DN enhancement project is important because people’s import minded attitude and eventually use of domestic products may create new job opportunities.”

So far the need for agricultural machineries such as sickles and palm pluckers have been notably high such as sickles and palm pluckers, the demand estimated to be thousands of units. So far users have been importing such instruments from overseas, like China.

In fact the need could have been covered domestically. If not all, at least half of them could be fulfilled at home. So far farmers have been fulfilling one hundred percent of their need form import.

Based on Regulations of the Ministry of Industry: Permenperin No. 49/M-IND/PER/5/2009 on the guidelines of use of domestic products and procurement of goods and services, agricultural machines are among the 21 groups of goods and services which are produced domestically. Therefore, by this regulation, if there were any provider of goods and services who offer goods with 40 percent local content, they would be given price preference at least 15% above price of imported products apart from import tax. For this reason it becomes mandatory to prioritize on domestic products.