August 21, 2013

 

 

Indonesia's Jakarta Beef Committee (KDS) has recommended that the city administration should request a special beef import quota from the central government in order to control rising prices which occurred following the Ramadan fasting month and Idul Fitri holiday.

 

"Jakarta needs 118 tonnes of frozen meat per day, which comes to around 43,000 tonnes/year. Meanwhile, the government has limited the import of frozen meat to 32,000 tonnes nationally," committee chairman, Sarman Simanjorang, said.

 

"The problem is that Jakarta fully relies on imports, because it doesn't have any local production. As a result, prices have soared as demand keeps increasing. It's time Jakarta had a special quota," he added. Sarman said that the request would be to exempt Jakarta from the import limitation to ensure beef stocks for the city, which is a benchmark for other cities.

 

Agriculture Minister, Suswono, said recently that price control was important in the capital as the beef price is used as a benchmark by other cities to determine prices.

 

The committee blamed the central government for failing to ensure beef supplies by limiting import quotas when it actually could not meet the national demand. National self-sufficiency is the reason behind the limitation policy.

 

The government currently limits imports of secondary cuts of frozen beef and live cattle to protect local producers. However, the committee said that the ministry had failed to take actual local production into consideration, which is less than the national demand, when calculating the import quota.

 

As a result, beef prices in Jakarta continue to soar above the ideal price, even after Ramadhan and despite the State Logistic Agency's (Bulog) additional import of 3,000 tonnes of frozen beef during the Islamic holy month which usually sees high beef demand.

 

In order to control prices in the country, the ministry also imported an additional 8,990 live cattle from Australia. Beef prices in the city ranged from around US$8.50 to US$11/kg after Idul Fitri, Sarman said. The committee said that the price should have gone down to between US$6.40 and US$7.31, which is the ideal price.

 

Sarman added that Jakarta was also the place of work for 12.5 million people and was visited by more than two million foreign tourists annually. He believes that other provinces might be able to supply Jakarta. However, these areas would prioritise fulfilling demand in their respective areas first.

 

The government's failure to identify the national demand and amount of national production had led to unstable beef prices for the last 18 months, Sarman said.

 

Governor Joko Widodo said that he would take the committee's recommendation into consideration.