Jakarta – The government should refrain from importing vast amounts of rice to avoid impoverishing farmers, a campaigner says.

Tejo Wahyu Jatmiko, the national coordinator for the Alliance for Prosperous Villages (ADS), said that the government's decision to import rice impoverished more than 44 million people who worked as farmers in the country.

"Currently, we are self-sufficient in rice. The question is, therefore, why is imported rice still being brought to Indonesia in vast amounts?" he asked during the commemoration of World Food Day on Oct. 16.

Tejo added that the government's policy to liberate trade and implement an almost zero-tariff policy has led to the flood of imported rice to Indonesia, causing the country's small-scale farmers to suffer.

The Central Statistics Board (BPS) imported 1.5 million tons of rice in 2010, with Vietnam and Thailand the largest exporters. Through until June of this year, Indonesia imported 500,000 tons of rice. But with the inclusion of Idul Fitri in September and the holiday season at the end of the year, the amount of imported rice in 2011 could possibly reach last year's figure of between 1.5 million and 1.6 million tons.

Tejo explained that even though the amount of imported rice may seem small - merely 5 percent of Indonesia's total rice consumption, in reality, it placed a heavy burden on farmers, as the rice was frequently imported during local farmers' harvesting periods.

Gunaryo, the Trade Ministry's director general on domestic trade, told The Jakarta Post that importing rice was still important to support the country's rice reserves to combat any sudden shocks in supply, such as unexpected droughts or natural disasters.

If supplies were hit and the country faced the risk of running out of rice, the price of rice could consequently skyrocket and many Indonesians living close to the poverty line could suffer.

Gunaryo explained that the rice-import policy was imperative to ensure two things. First, to maintain rice supplies throughout the year, while harvesting usually only occurred in March, April, and May.

The second, he said, was to maintain rice supplies across all provinces in the country, while rice production remained concentrated in only a few areas.

"[The harvest] does not occur simultaneously in the rice-producing areas across Indonesia. More importantly, Indonesia's rice-production provinces are still concentrated in West Java, Central Java, and East Java," Gunaryo said.

According to Kadir Ruslan, a statistician at BPS, Indonesia has achieved a rice surplus since 2008. Kadir, however, warned that the BPS data should not be used as a benchmark, since there could have been flaws in the process of collecting the data in the field, and BPS' calculation methods were still conservative.

"The methods [used by BPS] to calculate rice production are very conventional. Besides, [BPS] officials sometimes make mistakes when they collect data in the field," Kadir told the Post on Tuesday. (sat)