Indonesia's unmilled rice output is expected to rise 10 percent to 72.02 million tonnes this year as it expands plantation areas in line with its 2014 self-sufficiency target, a government minister said on Monday. Southeast Asia's biggest economy has forecast that unmilled rice output would hit 65.4 million tonnes for 2011, less than it previously estimated, as hot weather and disease hit production.
"The government plans to add 100,000 hectares of rice paddies (by 2012)," Agriculture Minister Suswono told reporters at a news conference, adding that the aim was to have a 10 million tonnes surplus by 2014. Indonesia, which has for years said it wants to become self-sufficient in rice, had a rice harvest area of 29,070 hectares (71,830 acres) in 2011, according to its statistics agency.
"Seventy two million tonnes target will not be difficult (and) overall demand would be well covered by local production," Suswono said. Indonesia is the world's third-largest rice grower and has 240 million mouths to feed, with monthly rice consumption at 2.7 million tonnes and growing. The archipelago issued permits to import 1.9 million tonnes of rice last year, from Vietnam, Thailand and India.
The world's most populous Muslim nation likes to keep large stocks of the staple food rice to guard against possible food inflation and production problems should they arise. For sugar, Indonesian output for 2012 is seen almost doubling to 4.39 million tonnes versus an estimated 2.23 million tonnes last year, Suswono said, adding that the 2012 figure is likely to be revised due to slow progress with expansion.
In 2010, Indonesia's sugar output was 2.2 million tonnes. Indonesia is Southeast's Asia biggest sugar consumer, and imports more than 2 million tonnes of sugar - both raw and white - to meet household and industrial consumption. "In an effort to have self sufficiency in sugar by the end of 2011, sugar cane plantations were 447,3000 hectares," said Suswono. Land used for sugar plantations was 431,000 hectares in 2010, according to the Indonesian Sugar Council.
Indonesia's forestry ministry said last May it had offered 2.0 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of degraded and forest land to be used as sugar plantations. Soybean output in 2012 is seen at 1.9 million tonnes versus 870,000 tonnes last year, while corn production is estimated to hit 24 million tonnes, from 17.2 million tonnes in 2011, the agriculture minister said. To achieve its ambitious targets, the agriculture ministry will allocate 17.81 trillion Indonesian rupiah ($1.96 billion) to support its self-sustainability and expansion programmes, versus 17.6 trillion rupiah last year, Suswono said.
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