JAKARTA: The government is sounding out the possibility of importing rice from India and Pakistan amid low rice stocks following a prolonged dry season.
“We are still negotiating imports with India and Pakistan,” said Trade Minister Thomas Lembong in Jakarta on Wednesday.
The government, Thomas said, was still preparing a government-to-government Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on rice imports with the Pakistani government. The State Logistics Agency (Bulog) was studying the technical details of Pakistan’s rice stocks, he went on.
“We are also proposing an MoU with India, as it has for years been the world’s largest exporter of rice. They export between US$3 billion and $4 billion worth of white rice a year,” said Thomas.
Earlier, Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution said that because of last year’s prolonged El Niño, the rice planting season had been put back from October to November. As a result, harvest time in several areas across Indonesia suffered delays, leading to depleted rice stocks in the first quarter of 2016.
“We have calculated that we still have only 1.35 million tons of rice in March. Normally, we have 1.5 million tons. To fulfill the shortage of rice, we’re looking at signing MoUs with Myanmar and Pakistan,” Darmin told a press conference last week.
He further explained that the agreements were a precaution measure to anticipate reduced rice stocks, which could in turn lead to surging prices of basic commodities.
“The estimated domestic production of rice at the end of March this year will be 1.35 million tons […] From the end of March to April, our rice production will improve as the effects of El Niño gradually lessen,” he said.
