JAKARTA – The increase in the prices of three main commodities–corn, eggs, and purebred chicken–is still a concern for the government.
This was stated by the Minister of Home Affairs Muhammad Tito Karnavian during the Regional Inflation Control Coordination Meeting held on Monday (10/7) at the Sasana Bhakti Praja Building, Ministry of Home Affairs, Jakarta.
“There were several commodities that became our concern last week, the price of corn at the farmer level, purebred chicken meat and purebred chicken eggs,” he said.
Tito explained, his party has held technical meetings with ministries/institutions such as the National Food Agency (NFA), Ministry of Trade, Ministry of Agriculture, Bulog, breeder associations, and laying associations.
The meetings were held to look for the main causes of the increase in the prices of the three commodities and discuss measures to control them.
His party will also hold a follow-up meeting, especially to discuss data reconciliation.
“Is the problem in the [price of] rising feed, corn, or problems in the distribution and trade system that involve the distribution chain, starting from large producers, then distributors, down to the retail level. So, this meeting will be continued on Wednesday,” said Tito.
Meanwhile, Deputy III for Consumption Diversification and Food Safety of NFA Andriko Noto Susanto explained that there were several factors that led to the high price of corn.
One of them is the situation of Indonesia itself that hasn’t reached the harvest season or the harvest is not evenly distributed throughout Indonesia so that the price soars.
To overcome this, he added, there are several mitigation efforts that can be done, such as encouraging the use of government food reserves.
“Hopefully Bulog can make it happen soon so that we can intervene when the price of corn is high among consumers, and we can also link breeder associations with corn producers in surplus areas,” he said.
Meanwhile, for the rising prices of purebred chicken meat, his party emphasized that one of the reasons was the increase in demand due to the recovery of people’s economic activities.
Apart from that, there has been an increase in the price of production inputs such as feed corn, soya bean meal, and other imported raw materials.
“For mitigation efforts, we encourage government to provide corn reserves, connecting breeder associations with associations of purebred chicken meat companies, for example Aprindo (Indonesian Retailers Association), Arphuin (Indonesian Poultry Slaughterhouses Association), and other slaughterhouses to buy according to the reference price within the period until it recovers,” he concluded.
