The chief economic minister Hatta Rajasa said after a coordination meeting here on Wednesday that the money was taken from food stabilization funds set in the state budget at Rp2 trillion.
"We will use the staple food stabilization funds of Rp2 trillion and we have set aside of it amounting to about Rp380 billion to assist formers who experienced harvest failures," the coordinating minister for economic affairs said.
The minister said that food stabilization funds had increased by Rp600 billion in the revised state budget so that the total increases to Rp2.2 trillion.
"Therefore, we now have a fund of Rp2.2 trillion and we will use this to stabilize basic food prices," Hatta said.
The government also is considering providing thirteenth raskin (rice for the poor) packages to poor people next December which is considered to be a month of rice scarcities.
"We have agreed to provide a thirteenth raskin package to be distributed in December where we believe food scarcities would take place," the minister said.
He said that based on monitoring there were now 66 cities in Indonesia where certain commodity prices had experienced a downward trend such as the prices of chili, red union, sugar and cooking oil.
"The price of the cheapest rice has begun to be stable, which in the first week of August has went down by 0.2 percent. Egg price has also declined," Hatta said.
Yet the government still conducted price stabilization because there were still basic necessities whose price were still going up such as chickens, meat and soybean.
"We need to stabilize soon the prices of chickens, meat, soybean in this first week. Therefore, our efforts to drive down the prices must be successful so that price increases would not happen," the minister added.
(Uu.A014/HAJM)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
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