JAKARTA - Member of Commission VI DPR RI Amin Ak encourages the government to dare to implement an "out of the box" policy to overcome the problem of soybean commodities. One of them offers barter between soybeans and coal from Indonesia.
"The short-term solution is by bartering soybeans and coal, which is Indonesia's comparative advantage," Amin Ak said in a written statement quoted by Antara, Saturday, February 19.
Amin pointed to China and India, two countries that are the fourth and fifth largest soybean producers in the world, as destinations for barter cooperation between the two commodities.
Thus, he continued, it is hoped that the government will direct coal producing SOEs to cooperate with Food SOEs in making the barter offer so that the soybeans obtained can be used to secure short-term stocks, at least securing stocks until July 2022.
He revealed that the stock until July is because it is estimated that global soybean prices starting in August 2022 are predicted to start to decline.
On the other hand, he continued, domestic production can be boosted by planting soybeans from March 2022, then harvesting them from June to July 2022.
"China and India are the two largest coal consuming countries in the world. Global statistics show these two countries consume 62 percent of the world's coal. At the same time they are among the five largest producers of soybeans. Bartering offers of coal with soybeans should be a viable option. interesting," said Amin.
Meanwhile, the long-term solution, according to him, is to increase domestic soybean production with a production cost incentive policy for farmers.
Amin reminded that government policies must be oriented to the prosperity of the people as much as possible so that various ways and strategies are needed to realize pro-people policies, even though they must be taken for the sake of the sustainability of soybean-based people's businesses.
"The majority of tofu and tempeh producers are micro and small businesses, they have just recovered after being hit by the pandemic. There must be a quick and tactical solution to save their business," said Amin and added that data from BPS showed that around 90 percent of Indonesia's soybean imports for 2020 came from the United States with a total of 2,238.5 tons out of a total of 2,475.3 tons of Indonesian soybean imports.
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