Government Is Asked To Ease Fertilizer Access To Farmers

INDUSTRY.co.id - Jakarta - The government is asked to facilitate the access of fertilizer for farmers in order to develop the agricultural sector and improve the welfare of rural communities.

Member of Commission XI of the House Eva Kusuma Sundari revealed that so far the access of fertilizer both subsidized and non-subsidized can not be obtained by farmers smoothly in some areas.

Therefore, the government should respond structurally like mediating to the banks. According to Eva, if banks do not want to enter the mediation business for farmers, then it could potentially impact on inflation and the level of village poverty.

Meanwhile, member of Commission XI of the House, Nur Chayati hopes that the government-owned agricultural insurance program can facilitate and not give heavy burden of requirements.

"Although this insurance is relatively cheap if calculated, because 80 percent is borne by the government, but people feel hard when going to claim this insurance," he said.

According to him, there are still a number of technical obstacles that occur in the field that is related to the weight requirements applied by the insurance for farmers who want to make a claim.

For that, PKB politicians that various parties concerned can check back on technical loss payment so that participants of the insurance program should not be made difficult and felt the benefits by the community.

Earlier, SOE Minister Rini Soemarno said the government is committed to continuously improve the efficiency of fertilizer plants so that the price of strategic commodities can be more affordable by farmers.

"We are building a new fertilizer plant in Pusri to replace the old factory in order to further improve the efficiency of fertilizer production," said Minister Rini to reporters in Palembang, Friday (5/11/2018).

Meanwhile, the Minister of Industry of Airlangga Hartarto said the newly built fertilizer plant is indeed more efficient because the use of gas-efficient farmers will lower prices and subsidies from the government will go down.

The concept of revitalization is replacing a number of old plants and wasteful consumption of gas raw materials with new plants that are energy efficient, environmentally friendly and efficient consumption of raw materials.