Indonesia to import one million tons of rice from Cambodia

The Jakarta Post, 
Jakarta | National | 
Thu, November 01 2012, 

Indonesia will import 100,000 tons of rice from Cambodia next month, Trade Ministry director general for foreign trade Deddy Saleh has said.
The importation is a follow up from a joint trade agreement signed in August this year.
“For the first batch, we will import 100,000 tons to secure the domestic stocks of three million or four million tons of rice. Next year, we will import 1 million tons of rice from Cambodia,” Deddy said.
In August, Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan and his Cambodian counterpart Cham Prasidh agreed to make Cambodia one of Indonesia’s alternative rice sources after Thailand and Vietnam.
The rice would not be directly delivered to the country. “The rice will stay in Cambodia. We will take it only if we need additional domestic stock,” Deddy said, as quoted by kompas.com.
The State Logistics Agency (Bulog) will set up a branch office in Cambodia to resell the rice.
As the third-largest rice consumer in the world, with a per capita annual consumption of 139 kilograms, Indonesia has named Thailand and Vietnam as the main rice suppliers. Recently, Indonesia targeted other countries, including Cambodia and India as alternative rice sources.

Despite being self-sufficient in 2008 and 2009, Indonesia began to import rice in 2010 after stockpiles dropped and harvests failed to meet targets.
In 2011, Indonesia imported 1.9 million tons of rice from Thailand, Vietnam and India, to ensure it had plentiful stocks and to avoid food inflation.
The government predicted that Indonesia’s total rice production might stand at 38 million tons this year, while consumption would reach 34 million tons. This means that the country would be able to book 4 million tons in rice surplus. However, Indonesia would need at least 10 million tons of surplus annually to secure the domestic stockpiling. (lfr)