Jakarta, Jan. 4 - Floods in parts of Indonesia's main rice-growing areas may delay the rice harvest but will not disturb the country's rice stocks, a senior agriculture official said on Friday. Torrential rains in some parts of Central and East Java have caused floods and landslides in the areas, killing at least 112 people and displacing some 60,000 in the past two weeks.
Java is the main area for growing rice, the staple food of Indonesia's population of more than 220 million.
"Some 29,000 of 100,000 hectares of rice fields were seriously damaged by the flood in Central and East Java but we are going to replant the fields," Sutarto Alimoeso, director general of food crops at the agriculture ministry told Reuters.
Alimoeso said the floods, which also inundated some rice fields in West Kalimantan and Sumatra's Aceh, may postpone the February-March and March-April harvest season but would not affect the country's rice stocks.
Indonesia has been struggling to increase rice output in its 10-12 million hectare fields, but lack of good quality seeds and fertiliser have hampered production.
Mustafa Abubakar, head of state logistics agency Bulog, said the country's rice stocks stood at 1.6 million tonnes and would be sufficient for the next eight months.
"We have 680,000 tonnes of rice ready to be distributed until February. Some rice imports are also arriving in the country," Abubakar told Reuters.
Bulog buys rice from farmers and imports the grain if necessary to stabilise local prices. It is also responsible for distributing rice to the poor at 1,600 rupiah ($0.17) a kilogram.
The government has allowed Bulog to import rice at any time of the year to tackle shortages in the local market. Rice imports are a sensitive issue in Indonesia and in the past have sparked protests in the countryside.
Bulog will import the remaining 200,000 tonnes of the planned 1.5 million tonne 2007 rice quota if and when necessary.
Last month, the government cut the rice import duty by 18 percent to 450 rupiah a kilogram from 550 rupiah, a move that will ease the financial burden on Bulog.
The government still bans private traders from importing medium-quality rice, but allows them to import specific-type of rice such as glutionous rice and rice for health purposes.
The country expects its rice output to rise 5 percent in 2008 to 59.90 million tonnes from 57.05 million tonnes in 2007, due to higher productivity.