Agriculture Ministry Prepares Rp800 Billion To Handle Drought

Jakarta (Antara Bali) -- The Ministry of Agriculture has set aside Rp800 billion in anticipation of the impacts the ongoing drought may have on the sector.

Minister of Agriculture Amran Sulaiman said here on Monday that he had initially allocated Rp2 trillion to improve irrigation networks.

"Yesterday, Commission IV of the House of Representatives approved changing the allocated amount to Rp880 billion to deal with the drought," he revealed after a meeting on the issue in his office.

The meeting was attended by members of Commission IV and officials from the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency as well as the Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing.

 With regard to the impacts of the drought on the agriculture sector, the minister pointed out that so far, harvests failed in some 17,000 hectares of the total 9.2 million hectares of rice fields across the country.

The fields that suffered harvest failures were in West Java, Central Java and Lampung (Sumatra).

Sulaiman further noted that as his office had anticipated the drought in December 2014, they distributed as many as 21,000 water pumps to farmers, developed 1,000 water reservoirs, and improved 1.3 million hectares of tertiary-irrigated fields.

The fields that faced harvest failure can be compensated by raising planting areas to 400 thousand hectares in the October to March period, he affirmed.

The minister also stated that the drought affected only 110 thousand hectares of land this year, whereas it hit up to 250 thousand hectares last year.

Furthermore, Chairman of House Commission IV Edhy Prabowo has urged the government to be focused on handling the drought.

He stated that the commission supported the Ministry of Agriculture's efforts to deal with the drought by allowing it to reallocate budget worth Rp880 billion for several posts to tackle the issue.

Prabowo added that he had also warned the government against using the drought as a pretext to import rice.

"The El Nino issue must not be used to permit the import of rice," he remarked. (WDY)