"The soaring beef price which reaches Rp90.000 a kg apparently results from a shortage of beef supplies in the market. But this does not mean that the government must import beef and leave beef trade to the market mechanism to deal with the shortage of beef supplies," HKTI Secretary General Fadli Zon said in a press statement released on Friday.
Actually, high beef price benefited cattle raisers but if the price skyrocketed it would cause a problem to customers, he said.
"The beef price which reaches Rp90.000 a kg is the highest compared to those of other countries which range between Rp50.000 and Rp60.000 a kg," he said.
However, cattle raisers could not always benefit from the high beef price, he said.
"Ideally, the high beef price should serve as incentives for cattle raisers. But the high beef price has an impact on the prices of other commodities. Therefore, the higher the beef price, the more miserable the life of the people," he said.
He realized that there had been pressure on the government to raise the quota of beef imports.
But he likewise stressed that the beef imports would not resolve the problem.
He said the country`s free trade policies had made the government lazy to create self-reliance in beef production.
The government`s target of self-reliance in beef production by 2014 would be a mere dream if the country kept relying on imported beef, he pointed out.
The key to solving the problem was improving the mechanism of beef distribution and speeding up the attainment of self-reliance in beef production, he said. (S012/B003)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
Copyright © ANTARA 2013
