Jakarta – State-owned logistics company Bulog has attributed the decline of its rice absorption to the ending of the harvest season and the damage to facilities caused by the Central Sulawesi earthquake, both of which occurred last month.

Bulog operations and public service director Tri Wahyudi Saleh said the end of the rice harvest season signalled reduced domestic rice output, while the Central Sulawesi earthquake had disabled the Bulog division in the affected province, thereby affecting the organization's overall performance.

"We used to be able to purchase over 100 tons of rice per day but now it is less than 100 tons," said Tri Wahyudi in Palu, Central Sulawesi on Friday as reported by tempo.co.

The low absorption rate is detrimental to Bulog's goal of purchasing 2.7 million tons of rice by December, and it has only purchased 0.9 million tons as of June.

In spite of the low absorption, Tri Wahyudi said Bulog still had a sufficient 2.5 million tons of rice – including 13,000 tons stored in South Sulawesi – to feed the population until the end of the year.

Central Sulawesi Bulog head Khozin confirmed his division had 13,000 tons of rice, enough to feed the earthquake-struck province, but had to stop purchasing more rice because the earthquake had heavily damaged their warehouse.

He said his division would await for repair aid from Bulog headquarters before resuming rice purchasing operations and, hopefully, catch their year-end target of 15,000 tons of rice. (brf)

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/10/22/bulog-blames-output-for-low-absorption.html