Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Agriculture Ministry has allocated Rp27 trillion in the budget fund for 8.8 million tons of subsidized fertilizers for 7.1 million hectares of rice fields and horticultural plantations this year, Director General of Infrastructure and Facilities of the Agriculture Ministry Sarwo Edhy said.

"Last year, (the subsidies) reached Rp29 trillion. Since the area of farm land declined, we used new farm land. The budget cut is about Rp2.1 trillion. We are still calculating it but based on our calculation, it is this amount," he said after attending a coordination meeting at the Vice Presidential Office in Jakarta on Tuesday.

The 8.8 million tons of subsidized fertilizers comprise 3.8 million tons of urea fertilizers, 779,000 tons of SP-36, 996,000 tons of ZA, 948,000 tons of organic fertilizers and 2.3 million tons of NPK, he said.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla said earlier, the allocation of subsidized fertilizers was too large compared to the area of farm land based on the corrected data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) and the National Agrarian Agency (BPN).

Kalla said fertilizer needed for every hectare of farm land is only 250 kilograms. However, the Agriculture Ministry pegged it at 400 kilograms.

Hence, Kalla summoned Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman to accurately calculate the allocation of subsidized fertilizers for farm land.

Also present at the coordination meeting were Finance Minister Sri Mulyani and Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto.



Translator: Fransiska Ninditya, Suharto
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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