REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – Love for the cake, bread, or instant noodle? You may contribute to the increase of flour demand in Indonesia. Indonesian Wheat Flour Producers Association (Aptindo) predicts, flour demand will increase by six per cent from that last year, which was 4.7 million tonnes. 

"As wheat has become the second staple food after rice, demand for wheat flour from the public and industry continues to increase. This is also because Indonesia has begun supplying biscuits to the Asian market," Aptindo executive director, Ratna Sari Loppies, said on Monday.

Loppies says that instant noodles, bread, and cake industries are still the main sub-sectors which absorbed most of the country`s wheat flour supplies. The increase in the demand for wheat automatically raises the volume of import of the commodity and its basic material, namely wheat seeds. Up to now, the need for wheat flour meets by wheat seed processing industry at home and through import.

She predicts that domestic wheat seeds industry can produce about 3.6 million tonnes of wheat flour this year. Producers, Loppies says, need some five million tonnes of wheat seeds, all of which should be imported.

"After being processed, only three-fourth of the wheat seeds can be turned into wheat flour while the remaining one-fourth becomes fodder," she said.

Based on data at the Central Board of Statistics (BPS), the biggest countries that exports wheat seeds and meslin (a type of wheat) are Australia (3.7 million tonnes), Canada (982,000 tonnes) and the United States (747,000 tonnes).

Besides importing wheat seeds, business players also import wheat flour to meet the four carbohydrates in various types of food at home. The BPS data shows, Indonesia`s wheat flour import in 2011 stands at 680,000 tonnes worth 267.7 million IDR. The main suppliers include Turkey (387,000 tonnes), Sri Lanka (207,000 tonnes) and the remaining ones come from Ukraine, Belgium and Australia. 

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