Consumption sugar deficit may continue

JAKARTA. The deficit of white crystal sugar or consumption sugar in 2016 is predicted to continue in 2017. The deficit is even predicted to be larger, as the sugar productions in 2016 dropped, while the demands in 2017 are increasing.

Ministry of Agriculture estimates, sugar productions in 2016 were only 2.2 million ton, while demands for sugar of this year reached 2.75 ton. Therefore, the deficit may reach 550,000 ton in this year.

Sugar deficit was also in place in the last year. The sugar productions in 2015 were only 2.49 million ton, while the demands in 2016 were 2.7 million ton.
Therefore, the government has allowed State Owned Companies (SOEs) to import raw sugar as much as 381,000 ton to cover the deficit in 2017.

Apparently, import will be a solution to cover the deficit of consumption sugar. However, Minister of Trade Enggartiasto Lukita stated, the government tends to encourage the increase in sugar productions to cover the demands. Therefore, the government would have not yet released the import license for consumption sugar.

Ministry of Trade will also restrict raw sugar distributions for refinery industry. The government has released a license to distribute as much as 1.5 million raw sugars to refinery industry in the first semester of 2017. Understandably, every year about 300,000 refinery sugars ‘leak’ to consumption market.

Therefore, not surprisingly that sugar consumptions are always covered in every year, despite of the deficit in sugar productions and the absence of imports. However, this harms cane farmers so that the local sugar productions always drop from year to year. “The government will always monitor the distributions of imported sugar. We are formulating the mechanisms,” Enggar said, Wednesday (11/1).

General Chairman of Indonesian People Cane Farmers Association (APTRI) Soemitro Samadikun said, it is impossible to increase domestic sugar productions, while the government is planning to shut down state owned sugar factories, due to efficiency reasons.

On the other hand, imports of raw sugar for refinery industry keep continue without evaluations.

The imported sugars have become serious concern of APTRI, as they potentially to penetrate traditional markets, which are markets of consumption sugar.

The government is supposed to increase the yields of farmers’ cane. Last year, the yields cane stood at critical point in average of 5.3%, while the yields of cane reached 8.3% on 2015.

(Muhammad Farid/Translator)