GOVT ADVISED TO RECONSIDER UREA FERTILIZER IMPORT PLAN

Yogyakarta, INDONESIA, Feb 24 (ANTARA) - The government should reconsider its plan to import 500,000 tons of urea fertilizer because the problem being faced at present does not concern stocks but distribution, an agriculturalist here said.
If the government pushed through its plan, the volume of domestic urea fertilizer stocks would increase but the fertilizer's distribution would remain a problem, said Prof Mochammad Makrum, an expert on agriculture at Gajah Mada University, here Tuesday.
If the problem of fertilizer distribution is not solved properly, imports to increase the stocks would be useless, he said, adding that fertilizer distribution had always been fraught with tricky problems
He said the practice of hiding subsidized fertilizer, the use of subsidized fertilizer for plantation areas which actually did not need it, the stockpiling, and the discrepancies in data between regional administrations and distributors posed a serious problem in fertilizer distribution.
"Such illegal practices should be overcome before fertilizer is imported," Maksum said.
He added that if those problems were not dealt with properly, imbalances in fertilizer distribution would continue to haunt the government.***