BI Says Procurement of Control Atmosphere Storage Can reduce the Rate of Inflation in East Kalimantan

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

SAMARINDA - Bank Indonesia East Kalimantan Province Representative Office (BI KPw Kaltim) stated, the procurement of control atmosphere storage or agricultural product storage machines can put a brake on the rate of inflation, because products can be released when prices fluctuate.

"This year there is a regional company in Samarinda procuring control atmosphere storage, so that when there is a price fluctuation, the commodities stored in the control atmosphere storage can be issued to reduce inflation," said Head of BI KPw Kaltim Budi Widihartanto quoted from Antara, Sunday, 6 August.

Control atmosphere storage is capable of storing commodities with maintained quality for six months such as chilies, shallots and other commodities that often drive inflation.

While the condition of East Kalimantan in general, the need for food is still imported from outside the region, such as from South Kalimantan, East Java, South Sulawesi, West Sulawesi and Central Sulawesi, but at certain moments the price of these commodities is expensive due to several reasons.

A number of factors that contributed to the increase in prices included the failure of many areas to harvest, then the bad weather at sea which could hamper the traffic of ships transporting important commodities for public consumption.

For this reason, through its controlled atmosphere storage, when there is a big harvest in other areas, be it chilies, onions and others, prices tend to be cheap, so that East Kalimantan can buy these commodities in large quantities to be stored in controlled atmosphere storage.

These commodities will then be issued when supply is stagnant which causes prices to fluctuate, both hampered by supply because many areas have failed to harvest or bad weather has hampered travel.

"BI this year has also made a recommendation to purchase proportional control atmosphere storage, not a large one because large maintenance and operational costs are definitely more expensive. If needed, BI can also assist with the procurement," said Budi.

Previously, while chatting casually over dinner with journalists, he also said that East Kalimantan has always been united in controlling inflation, especially the role of the Regional Inflation Control Team (TPID) both at the provincial and regency/city levels which actively involve many parties.