REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- A member of the House of Representatives' (DPR's) Commission IV, Andi Pasluddin Akmal, has said the government should reduce salt imports that rose this year. "The state's efforts to improve the regulatory mechanism for such imports have not shown any result, let alone the ideal to achieve a level where we would have no need to import salt," Akmal stated in a release received here on Saturday.

According to Akmal, the government has not made serious efforts to manage the salt sector by upgrading technology and thus meeting the quality requirements that consumers expect.

Akmal, who is a politician of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), explained that Australia and India continue to be the key players in the salt import sector. Based on data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) in March 2016, Indonesia imported salt valued at US$11.4 million, amounting to 276,299 tons.

Countries that exported salt to Indonesia included Australia, India, New Zealand, Britain and Singapore. This year, he added, China too became a significant player, exporting salt to Indonesia. It sold 1.4 million tons of salt worth US$57.3 million, becoming the fourth largest salt supplier to Indonesia after Australia, India and New Zealand.

According to him, four ministries--the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Trade--need to harmoniously cooperate in order to achieve self-sufficiency in salt. "The ministries should support each other in assisting salt farmers (so that the product quality is good); development of salt factories by the Ministry of Industry; more absorption of farmers' salt by state-owned salt company PT. Garam; exercising price control through the Ministry of Trade," he argued.

Akmal also argued that the issue of salt is not as intractable as that of meeting the supply needs of other commodities such as rice, sugar, corn, cassava and so forth. Previously, the government had said it was optimistic that it would achieve salt self-sufficiency in 2017 through a number of efforts to support the national program.

Deputy II for Coordination of Natural Resources and Services of the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs Agung Kuswandono pointed out in a written statement on Wednesday that his side continued to monitor the progress in attaining national self-sufficiency in salt and has held a coordination meeting to look for ways to increase salt production and enhance quality. "Self-sufficiency in salt is expected to be realized in the year 2017, as laid down in the Draft National Salt Roadmap 2017," he assured.

According to Agung, the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries had taken many steps to help improve the quality of farmers' salt. The domestic need for salt is about 4.019 million tons, comprising 2.054 million tons of industrial salt and 1.965 million tons of consumer salt.

The national salt production has reached 3.8 million tons--3.1 million tons of salt produced by farmers and 700,000 tons of PT Garam.

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