On the other hand, the Ministry of Agriculture claims that Indonesia has returned rice self-sufficiency, and even last year there was an award from the UN food agency, FAO for this achievement.
Chairman of the Indonesian Farmers' Union, Henry Saragih, criticized the planned import of rice from India, on various grounds.
Governments are judged to have out-of-sync data, and tend to import any commodity that farmers can actually produce.
Moreover, by the end of next month it is expected that Indonesia will experience another major harvest, before farmers switch to palawija commodities. So the import of rice from India, will really hit the farmers.