February 22, 2011

Indonesia's soy council doubts its self-sufficiency target

Indonesia's National Soy Council said it is uncertain of the government's target for the nation to achieve self-reliance in soy provisions in 2014.

The government has no strategic steps to ensure that the target could be achieved, Benny A Kusbini, the Council chairman said last weekend.

The country needs to chalk up an annual increase of 20% in soy production in order to achieve the target in 2014, Kusbini said.

In the past five years, the country's production of soy grew only by 7.8% annually on the average, he pointed out.

The government has estimated the country's soy will reach 2.4 million tonnes in 2011 and in 2012, up to 2.74 million tonnes in 2013 and 2.5 million tonnes in 2014.

The government failed in its programme of planting soy over 920,000 hectares of lands in 2010 that production fell far short of domestic requirement, Kusbini said.

The country, therefore, has remained dependent on import for considerable part of its requirement, he added.