Gov’t Committed to Boost Absorption of Salt Produced by Local Farmers

By Office of Assistant to Deputy Cabinet Secretary for State Documents & Translation     Date 5 Oktober 2020
Category: News
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Minister of Industry Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita. (Photo by: PR/Ibrahim)

The Government continues its efforts to speed up absorption of domestic salt for industrial use. Ministry of Industry has carried on business matching program since 2018 to facilitate cooperation between industries that use salt as raw material and local salt farmers.

“Based on the MoU  (between industries and salt famers), the target for absorption from August 2018 to July 2019 was 1.1 million tons of salt; the realization was 1.053 million tons, with an additional  absorption of 500,000 tons by small and medium businesses,” Minister of Industry Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita said during a press conference after joining a Limited Meeting on the Acceleration of Farmers’ Salt Absorption through video conference on Monday (5/10).

During that period, manufacturing industries absorbed 1.5 million tons of local farmers’ salt, while in the August 2019 to July 2020 period, the realization of salt absorption reached 1.5 million tons higher than the target of 1.1 million tons.

“For this year’s period from August to December, the target is 500,000 tons while the daily realization reaches 163,000 tons,” Agus said.

The Minister went on to say that the Government has decided to allow salt and sugar imports for industrial raw materials. Ministry of Industry has established permitting procedures for the imports and created an extremely strict mechanism.

“Ministry of Industry has an extremely strict mechanism to verify the amount of salt and sugar needed for industries,” he said adding that the Ministry will cooperate with State-owned Surveying Company Sucofindo so that the verification will be objective.

In addition, the Ministry will also supervise the use of imported salt and sugar and ensure these commodities will not be sold at markets and hinder the absorption of farmers’ salt and sugar production. Strict sanction will be imposed to industries violating the permits.

“We will impose strict sanction to industries which were given permit to import salt and sugar but misuse the raw materials and sell them at the markets,” he firmly said.

He added that the demand of salt for industrial raw materials continues to increase year by year. Comparing to the demand in 2019, there is an increase of 6.8 percent in this year’s demand.

“We have projected that the demand will keep increasing in the future in line with the increase of industries’ capacity,” he added.

Import value of salt for industrial raw materials in 2019 which stood at US$108 million has brought added value for the industry.

“Through the imports, the industry got US$37.7 billion of export value in 2019. Thus, we can now imagine the added value brought by the absorption of salt,” he said. (FID/UN)

 

 

Translated by: Rany Anjany
Reviewed by: Mia Medyana B.

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