REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JEMBER -- The domestic food production needs to be increased as Indonesia will not import rice, according to Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman.

"We hope our rice production would increase this year and will be higher than that of last year," the minister noted after conducting a grand rice harvest in Rambigundam Village, Jember District, East Java, on Wednesday.

The government has not imported rice over the past 15 months, and this year, hopefully, there would be no rice imports, he affirmed.

The Ministry of Agriculture has recorded that the current national rice stock, reaching 1.2 million tons, was still adequate. An additional 3.5 million tons will be added following the February 2016 harvest.

Since January 2016, rice harvests have been conducted daily as a result of which the monthly unhulled rice production reached 500 thousand tons, which has increased the nation's stock. It is therefore expected that the rice production would be adequate, so the country would not need to import the commodity from other countries.

"We will also do our best to keep the price of rice stable at the farmers' level during the harvest seasons. To this end, the government is cooperating with the State Logistics Board (Bulog) to purchase the farmers' rice," the minister noted.

He remarked that the price of unhusked rice is set based on the government-sanctioned price (HPP) at Rp3,700 per kilogram, while the HPP price of rice is set at Rp7,300 per kilogram. However, many farmers did not sell their rice to Bulog at a lower HPP price.

"Bulog offers two price solutions: public service obligation price and commercial price based on the market price. The president had summoned me some time ago to settle this matter, so that Bulog will purchase the farmers' rice, maize, and onion production," he said.

In the meantime, Hari Wijayadi, the head of Jember's Agricultural Service, stated that the district, with 167,220 hectares of rice fields, has set a target to produce 1,05,000 tons in 2016.

"We had set a target to produce 1,030,000 tons of dry unhusked rice last year, but provisional data shows that the realization has reached 1,005,000 tons," he noted.

During the October 2015 planting season, a total of 78,669 hectares of fields were planted with rice, while the harvest during the January-March 2016 period is forecast to cover 51 thousand hectares.

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