The 1992 Indonesia Never Self-sufficient Soy

Jakarta -Indonesia ever in 1992, with the production of self-sufficiency soybeans reached 1.8 million tons/year. It last achieved self-sufficiency Indonesia, domestic production is stagnating even tend to go down.

"However, at that time a population we still 180 million people, currently our production continues to fall only 800,000 tons while the population we have 240 million inhabitants, of course it is not enough just to rely on local production," said the Secretary General of the Ministry of Trade in the event Public Ardiansyah Parman Hearing "Problems" in the Office of Indonesia Soy KPPU, Tuesday (17/8/2012).

According to Ardiansyah, imports of soybeans, Indonesia is not the terbebesar numbers were only 5% of the production of soy-United States.

"Imports from United States only 5% just compare China to its imports, as much as 61% or reach 22 million tonnes per year out of a total production of soybeans and the United States of Mexico and Japan 8,74% 5.24%," he said.

He assesses the reasonable if the price of soy in the country a few months surged sharply, because Indonesia hung with soybean imports, especially from the United States.

"Only when prices were Reasonable world soybean imports to rise, price/soy in the country also took part in the ride," he said.

He spoke of domestic soybean production is only about 800,000 tons/year, while soy consumption needs reached 2.4 million tons/year.

"Yes because our production could not meet the needs of domestic consumption, production 800,000 tons/year of us, while his needs 2.4 million more, yes inevitably 2 million tons/year of soybeans imported, the number of these imports we tripled from our national production, reasonable price just soy ya imports rise, domestic soybeans joined up," he said.

However, it is certainly not able to condition left, Indonesia should have its own food security should be mainly soy, but in fact self-sufficient competition soy is very heavy.

"Local Soybean is always more expensive than soy imports, this makes the farmers prefer planting rice, sugar cane, corn or cassava, it was better," said Ardiansyah.

The price of soybeans imported more cheaply, because of the incentive policy of export countries such as the United States manufacturer.

"That's why the price of imported soybeans can be much cheaper than local. not to mention the problems of transition of land use from agricultural land to non-agricultural pertahunnya could reach 100,000 hectares per year, thus reducing the impact on the area for planting more deterioration in production, "he asserts.

(rrd/hen)