Sunday 22 September 2013

STATE BUDGET 2014 TO BE ORIENTATED TO FOOD SOVEREIGNTY



Spokesperson of the Hanura Party Nurdin Tampubolon urged the Government to focus development strategy of RAPBN 2014 on food resiliency especially self sufficiency in rice, sugar, soy corn, salt, meat and fish. By this way it might be expected to reduce import of food and promote export of Indonesian products. The trend of soaring price of world’s food might motivate the effort to increase production and added value of Indonesian agricultural products. This was the information released by the PR Dept of House on Monday [26/8]

Fraction of the Hanura Party in their review of Financial Report of RAPBN 2014 stated the importance of strengthening food resiliency by increasing budget of the Ministry of Agriculture and other institutions significantly. This was a form of Government’s sound support to the food resiliency program and the effort to enhance farmer’s or companies activities or to expand and to build inter-village connectivity to enhance their marketing campaign.

About the target of oil lifting, the Hanura Party fraction proposed the target of 870 thousand barrel per day set in RAPBN 2014 be increased to 900 thousand barrels per day but on condition that the Government was serious about stepping up production of crude oil by promoting exploration, production and integrated processing to promote production output.

In addition to the above, economic growth of 2014 which was projected at 6.4% or increasing by 0.1% against APBN-P of 2013 which was only 6.3% should be based on the assumption that every increase of 1% of economic growth absorbed 500,000 workers but in 2014 next year only 450,000 workers were predicted to be absorbed.

The Hanura fraction saw that the projected economic growth of 2014 at 6.4% was below the capacity of natural resources and national economic potential; therefore the Hanura Fraction proposed that the project economic growth be inclusive of broader employment and business opportunities.

Indonesia Still Importing Agro Products

Spokesperson of the PPP Party Epyardi Asda in his overview of Government’s Financial Report and RAPBN 2014 quoted President SBY’s report that the Government set target to attain self sufficiency in five food commodities namely rice, corn, soy, sugar and beef for 2014.

Unfortunately all of the said products were still imported. The Government also set target to attain surplus of 10 thousand tons of rice for 2014. For that matter, the attainment called for serious attention. In RAPBN 2014, the Government only allocated fund of Rp2.4 trillion for building roads and irrigation projects in the rural areas. So far, the government’s attention on farmer’s need like farm equipments and production facilities was still at minimum.

The PPP fraction also criticized budget for infra-structure which constantly increased – but the betterment itself was still way below the standard to step up infra structure quality. The PPP Fraction also questioned the program of mass transportation at there was no clear underlying reference of the program. How many kilometers of road to be built, many villages would be electrified, and how long the road surface to be asphalt covered. All the progress should be clearly countable and measurable.
 
In regard to education, for which 20% of budget was allocated from APBN which had been underway to what extent the budget had brought progress to the of human resources in Indonesia was still questionable. Reality had it that school fess were still expensive, collections in schools was still happening, school infra structures damaged, and quality of human resources was still lo.

Business News - 30, 2013

No comments: