Jakarta –
President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) answered farmers who often complain about the high price of fertilizer. Jokowi said that this complaint became the main complaint that farmers conveyed during work visits.
“The difficulties that were conveyed when I went to the village, to the farmers, the first complaint is always fertilizer. And it’s true that it’s not an easy thing to find raw materials for now,” he said, during a visit to the Al-Ittifaq Kopontren in Bandung, quoted from the YouTube Presidential Secretariat, Monday (6/3/2023).
Jokowi revealed that the current shortage of fertilizer supply does not only occur in Indonesia but in all countries. The reason is that the biggest fertilizer suppliers, namely Russia and Ukraine, are currently at war.
“The supply of raw materials is from Russia from Ukraine, they just had a war. So the world has difficulty with fertilizer. When there is less fertilizer, then the price will definitely go up,” he said.
Jokowi also said that at this time it was unavoidable for fertilizer imports to occur because domestic procurement alone was far from sufficient. Even though PT. PT. Pupuk Iskandar Muda (PIM) located in Aceh.
“That’s 500,000 tons but it’s still far from enough,” he continued.
For this reason, this year Jokowi said a fertilizer industry would be built again in West Papua. However, the opening of the industry has still not prevented Indonesia from importing fertilizer.
“Even that is still not enough, we still need to import. Many raw materials still need to be imported,” he concluded.
(ada/hns)