"A road map was discussed just now to achieve the production growth with each region setting an average annual five percent growth," chief economic minister Hatta Rajasa said after a coordination meeting on food here on Thursday.
Hatta confirmed the government had prepared an investment plan to open new agricultural lands and build dams as an irrigation facility involving state enterprises.
"We will ensure the availability of the funds and create synergy among state enterprises that are already working now. Efforts to increase food production with the synergy of state enterprises are already underway. The forestry minister has prepared the land and in the future two million hectares more will be made available," he said.
Regarding present food supplies, Hatta said the national rice and food stocks were sufficient cuasing inflation in September to remain low at only 0.27 percent and 2.69 percent annually.
"Our food stocks are sufficient to meet the need of all regions. There is no shortage. Stocks controlled by the National Logistics Agency (Bulod) are also sufficient. As you know, these conditions have kept the inflation rate low," he said.
Hatta said the government had taken anticipatory measures to meet the upcoming dry season by preparing food resilience and food stabilization funds.
"I have called for close monitoring of conditions in the dry season. We must ensure that planting activity starts on time so that all the available funds for food stabilization and food problem solving will be fully utilized. This is part of our efforts to increase food resilience," he said.
Until now, Hatta said, the government had already used Rp1.3 trillion of the food stabilization funds totaling Rp3 trillion to safeguard food resilience.
"We have used just Rp1 trillion for rice for the poor program and Rp300 billion for anticipatory measures against harvest failures. So we still have enough funds to overcome problems caused by production disruptions," he said.
(Uu.H-YH/HAJM/O001)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
