First batch of rice to arrive in Indonesia next year

Illustrative image (Source: VNA)

Jakarta (VNA) – The first batch of 50,000 tonnes of rice from Vietnam and Thailand will arrive in Dumai port in Riau province, Indonesia, early next year, Antara news agency said on November 16.

The batch is part of one million tonnes of rice that Indonesia will import from Vietnam and Thailand, the world’s two leading rice producers.

The Indonesian government decided to import rice to ensure food supply in the market and stablise prices of necessary commodities for more than 250 million citizens of the archipelago country.

According to the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture, the prolonged drought from August to November this year caused considerable losses to Indonesian rice production, which is forecast not to achieve the yearly target of 75.5 million tonnes.

Indonesian Bureau of Logistics (Bulog) Director Djarot Kusumayakti said Indonesia’s amount of stock rice until December 2015 is only at 62,000 tonnes. The country needs from 1.5 to 2 million tonnes of rice to meet the demand before the new harvest early 2016.-VNA