Illustrative photo (Photo: VNA) Jakarta (VNA) – The National Logistics Agency of Indonesia (Bulog) on November 6 announced that the country plans to set the 2024 rice import quota at 2 million tonnes, a decrease from 3.8 million tonnes this year.
However, Bulog’s corporate secretary Awaludin Iqbal said that those imports will depend on domestic supply and demand.
On the same day, Indonesia also announced it will extend its rice social assistance programme until June 2024. The programme which was due to expire next month provides rice to 22 million lower income households to protect the poor from rising prices.
Speaking to the media, Indonesia’s Trade Minister Zulkifli Hasan said that the Indonesian Government decided to extend the programme considering the rice price has yet to drop.
The rising price was caused by drought linked to the El Nino weather pattern that has hit harvests.
Indonesia President Joko Widodo previously said the price of rice has risen by 19.8% as of the end of October.
In the first nine months of this year, Indonesia imported 1.79 million tonnes of rice, while Bulog's rice reserves remained at 1.4 million tonnes as of early November.
Previously, on November 3, Bulog announced that it had signed a contract to import 1 million tonnes of rice out of the total additional quota of 1.5 million tonnes from four countries - Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and Myanmar.
Mokhamad Suyamto, Director of Supply Chain and Public Services at Bulog, said this supplementary import aims to strengthen the government's rice stockpile until 2024.
According to Suyamto, so far this year, Bulog has distributed a total of 885,000 tonnes of rice to stabilise the market and 641,000 tonnes of rice in a social assistance programme for the poor nationwide from September to November 2023./.
