By Dewi Kurniawati
JAKARTA—Indonesia is considering a plan to import 1 million metric tons of rice from India in 2025 to secure supply until its main harvest, Coordinating Minister for Food Affairs Zulkifli Hasan said after a meeting of food and agricultural officials on Tuesday.
Indonesia’s rice output is estimated to fall 2.43 percent this year to 30.34 million metric tons, due to a delay in planting and harvest season amid longer dry weather in 2023, the statistics bureau said earlier this month.
“We need an additional 1 million tons … so that we can go through February. Output in December-February period is usually lower,” Head of National Food Agency Arief Prasetyo Adi told reporters after the meeting with Hasan.
Rice is a staple for most of Indonesia’s 280 million population and the main rice harvest typically starts in March.
Indonesia’s rice imports have jumped in the past two years, reaching over 3 million metric tons each year.
The Southeast Asian country aims to import up to 3.6 million tons of rice this year. It also plans to open between 750,000 hectares and 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres) of new rice fields in 2025 to achieve President Prabowo Subianto’s target of food self-reliance.
The world’s largest rice exporter India has removed the floor price for the export of non-basmati white rice this month to boost exports due to expectation of higher output and with stocks piling up since the 2023 export restrictions.
Indonesia’s trade surplus rose to a three-month high in August, topping forecasts, as exports grew much faster than expected, official data showed.
The world’s top exporter of thermal coal, palm oil and nickel metals reported a surplus of $2.89 billion last month, compared with $1.96 billion expected in a Reuters poll. The surplus was the biggest since May.
Exports in August grew 7.13 percent on a yearly basis to $23.56 billion, Statistics Indonesia said. The median forecast was for a 3.83 percent annual rise last month.
The pace of the August export rise was the quickest since January 2023, according to LSEG data.
Imports were worth $20.67 billion, up 9.46 percent from a year earlier, compared with the poll’s expectation of an 8.15 percent rise.
Shipments from the country have risen in annual terms each month since April, recovering after a year where export values fell sharply following the peak of a post-pandemic commodity price boom. – Reuters
