REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – Indonesian government will draft legal assistance as the base for cooperation on sugar cane seed import with Colombian government because the import plan is hampered due to quarantine procedure, the Minister of Agriculture, Suswono, said.

“We do not have quarantine procedure for import from this country,” Suswono said. The agreement must benefit for both countries and the signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will be hold later in the near future.

The agreement draft is done. Indonesia will ask for some feedback from Colombia. After both agree, they can establish a working group to process the probability of cooperation so that import can be acquired in 2012.

Compared to Colombia, Indonesian sugar cane has lower rendemen (sucrose content in sugar cane, which is about seven percent), that make national sugar production is also low. Colombian sugar cane rendemen is usually 12 percent.

Suswono believes if the import of sugar cane seed is increased, the local productivity can also be increased. “If we produce 10 percent rendemen in 450.000 hectare area, we can produce 4.5 million tonnes sugar,” he said.

Indonesia was self-sufficient in sugar in 2007. Yet, the production is decreasing on the recent years and now is below the national target.

Meanwhile, General Director of Plantation in the Ministry of Agriculture, Gamal Nasir, said that he could not tell the import volume from Colombia yet. “We still calculate it,” he said.

He admits the inability of Sugar Plantation Research Center (P3GI) to produce sugar cane seed was the reason behind the import plan. The seed import is needed to accomplish sugar self-sufficient in 2014.

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