...Suez Canal is silting and the conflict in the Middle East has also disrupted the availability of ships and containers.
Jakarta (ANTARA) - The President Director of State Logistics Agency (Bulog), Bayu Krisnamurthi, has said that siltation in the Suez Canal in Egypt has hampered soybean supply and triggered a soybean shortage in Indonesia.

“There are transportation problems happening right now. I received news that Suez Canal is silting and the conflict in the Middle East has also disrupted the availability of ships and containers," he informed at a press conference on the success of rice food aid in handling inflation in Jakarta on Thursday.

Krisnamurthi said that the two factors have forced transport ships to turn around to the Cape of Good Hope and resulted in a delay of three weeks.

He described transportation problems as the biggest obstacle to maintaining domestic soybean stocks. The low supply of soybeans is also the result of Bulog's decision to stop importing soybeans last year. As a result, soybean imports are entirely being carried out by the private sector.

However, a number of areas in Indonesia, such as East Java and Banten, have started to receive soybeans, which is expected to normalize stocks ahead of Ramadan, he informed.

"The fastest soybeans delivery will arrive in one to 1.5 months," Krisnamurthi said.

He said that the obstacles to soybean supply have been conveyed to the Indonesian Tofu Tempe Producers Cooperative Association (Gapoktindo). His party is also planning to try a new import system to prevent such things from happening again.

Meanwhile, Gapoktindo's secretary general, Hidayatullah Suralaga, in a press statement released on December 28, 2023, informed that soybean distribution was disrupted in early December, but business actors tried to speed up soybean arrival in Indonesia.

According to him, Indonesia received 60 thousand tons of soybeans through bulk ships and 75 thousand tons of soybeans in containers in November and December 2023, which were directly distributed throughout the country.

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Translator: Kuntum Khaira R, Resinta Sulistiyandari
Editor: Arie Novarina
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