Jokowi Asks Local Governments To Increase Food Assistance To Anticipate El Nino

JAKARTA - President Joko Widodo asked SOEs and local governments (Pemda) to strengthen and increase the budget for providing basic food assistance to the community as a step to anticipate the impact of the El Nino weather phenomenon.

"If possible, we have a budget for food assistance to the community to be strengthened, reproduced. For what reason, we are facing El Nino which we cannot calculate because it concerns the climate, so it must take precedence," said President Jokowi after reviewing the people's market at Rampal Field, Malang City, East Java, reported by ANTARA, Monday, July 24.

According to President Jokowi, the budget for providing basic food assistance must be prioritized because it involves the impact of El Nino which has the potential to disrupt food security.

In addition to strengthening basic food assistance, President Jokowi has also ordered regional heads to increase the number of cheap markets in the regions.

The President hopes that the cheap market and basic food assistance will prioritize areas that need more if El Nino has disturbed public health.

As a result of El Nino, a number of areas will experience more drought, potentially resulting in crop failure.

The President estimates that El Nino's impact will begin to be felt in August 2023. On the other hand, a number of countries, such as Vietnam and India, are no longer exporting rice, so Indonesia must prepare rice stocks for national consumption.

"In other countries, the incident affects food stocks. India has stopped exporting rice again, in Vietnam it also stops exporting rice again. We don't expect this incident to happen in our country, so everything must be prepared," said Jokowi.

Meanwhile, based on the forecasts of the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), the phenomenon of El Nino and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is positive to strengthen each other so that this year's dry season can become drier and rainfall in the low to very low category.

If usually the rainfall ranges from 20 mm per day, this dry season the figure becomes once a month or even no rain at all.

The peak of dry dry water is predicted to occur in August to early September with conditions much drier than in 2020, 2021, and 2022.