Fajarasia.co – President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) questioned the sizeable food security budget, which was disbursed around Rp92.3 trillion this year. Jokowi questioned the budget to his ministers.
This was conveyed at the opening of the Plenary Cabinet Session at the State Palace, today, Monday (20/6/2022).
“Because if we look at the government’s budget for food security, this is really big. In 2018 the total is Rp. 86 trillion, in 2022 it is Rp. 92.3 trillion,” said Jokowi.
“This is really big, what are the results every year? What concrete? It must be clear. If not, we’ll just use Rp92 trillion to buy rice for stock, right?,” he added.
Initially, Jokowi asked his ministers to focus on increasing large-scale production from farmers, corporations to state-owned enterprises. He also asked to plant commodities according to regional characteristics.
“Yesterday I saw that sorghum in NTT, for example, was planted with live corn. Once green sorghum was planted, it was very green and looked very fertile. It turns out that in NTT there is a lot of sorghum,” he explained.
If it can be produced on a large scale, said Jokowi, then it’s just a matter of choosing a commodity guarantor or an off taker.
“So there are farmers who continue to produce and those who buy. Don’t let farmers produce a lot, Bulog doesn’t take it, RNI doesn’t take it. This mechanism must be decided immediately. And yesterday we told the SOE minister, immediately who, what products, what the costs will be,” he said.
He also added that after the production from agriculture was taken, Jokowi ordered that sales be made immediately and not piled up in storage areas.
“If you take it, don’t get rich with Bulog, take from farmers a lot, stock, (but) you can’t sell it. So the quality goes down and there is rotten, damaged, don’t,” he said.
“This means that everything must be in the grand plan, the big plan as we have conveyed, the implementation must also be there. This does require a good orchestration between the ministries, institutions, SOEs, the private sector, and the regions, all of them,” he added.****
