Bulog Ensures El Nino Phenomenon Has No Impact On Rice Availability In NTT

JAKARTA - The Bulog Regional Public Company (Perum) of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) ensures that the El Nino phenomenon does not have an impact on the availability of rice in the island-based province.

"We know that El Nino is hitting all parts of Indonesia, including in NTT, the central government is on standby, so the need for rice in Indonesia, especially in NTT itself remains safe," said Perum Bulog Operations Manager of the NTT Regional Office Faizal Jafar in Kupang, quoted from Antara, Saturday, January 6.

Currently, rice stocks in NTT reach 5,824 tons. In addition, his party is still waiting for another rice shipment from the East Java region of approximately 3,829 tons.

Currently, the operational stock owned by Perum Bulog for the NTT region and spread throughout the NTT region reaches 9,653 tons of rice

"In addition, we are still waiting for the arrival of imported rice from Vietnam, which amounts to 3,950 tons, so that the total if imported rice enters, it reaches 13,603 tons," he said.

Rice imports carried out by the central government are an effort to maintain rice stocks in Indonesia.

"This El Nino crisis does affect the availability of rice in NTT. But people do not only receive rice from Bulog, there are traders from Java, Sulawesi and NTB who sell rice to NTT," he said.

In addition to providing rice, Bulog also gets the task of distributing rice aid to the community which is a program from the National Food Agency (Bapanas).

Currently, through the Bapanas program, Bulog NTT has distributed 97 thousand tons of rice aid to the community which was distributed to Bulog branch offices in all districts in NTT.

"With the assignment from Badanas, until now we have distributed aid to the community in collaboration with the Post Office," he said.