2014, Self-sufficiency of Sugar is Difficult to Occur
Self-sufficiency of sugar in 2014 occured when the land for expansion of sugarcane of 350 thousand hectares was available and the factory had been developed in 2010. This was delivered by the Minister of Agriculture of RI, Dr. Suswono in his welcome speech which was read by Dr. Aziz Hidayat, from the Directorate of Plantation of Ministry of Agriculture, in the Seminar and Worksho of National Sugar 2013 in Bogor Agricutural Universitry (IPB) at the International Convention Center (IICC), Monday (28/10).
In Seminar and Workshop held by this Unity of Indonesian Agronomy (Peragi), Minister of Agriculture said, many investors interested to build a sugar factory outside Java, but the result could be said as naught because of the unavailability of land. Even on August 2013, it had been published 13 Decrees of Forest Area Release by the Minister of Forestry for eleven companies with the area of 279,615 hectares.
“The land we prepare is scattered in 5 provinces outside Java. But, this move of land acquisition is not necessarily followed by the factory construction or sugarcane cultivation, because the condition in the field is different. There are still many problems which must be faced amongst them is the compensation money of land acquisition that is out of the ordinary,” he said.
Minister of Agriculture also requested that there would be synergistic of all parties. Because if it was calculated, the role of the Ministry of Agriculture was only 20 percents, and the rest was other party. Like the Ministry of Industry, Ministry of Commerce, Agency of Capital, University, Farmer and so on.
But this effort was assessed that it was too late to reach the self-sufficiency of sugar in 2014. It was delivered by Ir. Achmad Mangga Barani, MM as the Chairman of Peragi. According to him, according to the data delivered by the Minister of Agriculture, the total sugar production in 2013 experienced the reduction compared to last year of 1.7 percents. Almost impossible if next year, 2014, Indonesia could suffice the sugar demand of 5.8 million ton (2.8 million ton for direct consumption and 3 million ton of refined sugar).
“Current condition where the land is only 400-500 thousand hectare and the average production achieves 5 ton per hectare, so the total production is around 2.25-2.5 million ton. If there is no additional land and the process does not follow the Good Agriculture Production (GAP), so it is almost impossible that the year of 2014 is self-sufficiency,” he said accompanied by Dr. Sugianta, as the Secretary of Peragi and also the researcher of IPB. (zul)
