Jokowi Reminds Regions To Prepare Hungry Food Reserves In Puncak Regency

President Jokowi gave an award at the 2023 National Coordination Meeting for Inflation Control at the Palace Thursday (31/8/2023). BETWEEN Dwi Gayati

JAKARTA - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) reminded the importance of each region having food reserves to anticipate cases of hunger in Puncak Papua some time ago.

"As happened in Papua yesterday, there was no stock at all. Because there was no food network, it dropped from Jakarta. It couldn't be like that. The regions must have food reserves, what do they need to spare," Jokowi said at the 2023 National Coordination Meeting for Inflation Control, at the State Palace, Jakarta, Thursday 31 August, confiscated by Santara.

Jokowi emphasized that Indonesia is a large archipelagic country, so it cannot always rely on Jakarta to help provide food if needed.

According to the President, the crop failure that occurred in Central Papua resulted in people being starving and eventually dying occurred because the area did not have food stocks.

Therefore, he asked regional heads to decide on food commodities, such as rice that can be stored as stock.

"What is really necessary, spare. Reserved rice itself. Reserves itself are not a problem. So that policy decisions are in governors, regents, mayors decide for themselves," said Jokowi.

In addition, Jokowi also asked regional heads to optimize fiscal capacity through regional income to intervene in controlling inflation.

This is because inflation and economic growth are two things that must be maintained.

In the 2023 National Coordination Meeting for Inflation Control, Bank Indonesia reported that the inflation of the consumer price index in July 2023 was controlled at 3.08 percent, down faster and back to the target at 3 percent compared to 2022.