"Based on the recommendation of the Indonesian Sugar Council, companies which are expected to carry out sugar import are sugarcane factories but in a meeting the government decided to assign PPI to carry out the importation," Agriculture Minister Suswono said here on Tuesday.
He said that the imported raw sugar would later be distributed to private sugar factories for further process.
The minister said that the importation and the process of the raw sugar would be done in April 2012 at the latest. It will be used to meet the need for sugar in the Indonesian eastern regions in May, 2011.
"The imported raw sugar will be processed by sugar factories and would be allocated based on the capacity of the respective factories," he said.
He said that a total of 240 thousand tons of raw sugar would be needed to meet the shortage of 220 thousand crystal white sugar.
Suswono said that the raw sugar would later be processed by privately run sugar factories because state-owns plantation firms (PTPN) were not yet ready to operate until June 12, 2012.
(Uu.A014/H-YH)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
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