Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Minister of Agriculture (Mentan) Andi Amran Sulaiman said that his party, in this case the Ministry of Agriculture (Kementan) would resume 10 contracts for the procurement of agricultural machinery (Alsintan) which had previously been put on hold.
The detention was carried out following a corruption case involving former Minister of Agriculture Syahrul Yasin Limpo (SYL) along with 2 Ministry of Agriculture officials, namely Secretary General of the Ministry of Agriculture Kasdi Subagyono and Director of Agricultural Equipment and Machinery of the Ministry of Agriculture Muhammad Hatta. So these contracts need to be reviewed.
After being put on hold, Amran asked for the 10 procurement contracts to be continued, as long as the procurement contracts had no problems and followed the rules.
“(The procurement contract) will continue, as long as there are no problems,” said Amran when met by journalists at the Jakarta Ministry of Agriculture Office, Friday (27/10/2023).
 Photo: Minister of Agriculture Amran Sulaiman. (Public Relations Doc. Ministry of Agriculture)Minister of Agriculture Amran Sulaiman. (Public Relations Doc. Ministry of Agriculture) |
The reason for continuing the procurement, said Amran, was because the existing agricultural machinery needed to be renovated.
“God willing, we have asked to open it, I asked for follow-up. Why? Because farmers need it. Farmers need agricultural machinery, but even that is not enough,” he said.
Amran explained that the economic life of a machine tool is 5 years. After that, the machine will enter technical life which will result in the cost of repairing the machine being higher than the results.
However, regarding the calculation of how much additional machinery is needed to boost production, Amran admitted that currently his party is still calculating. He estimates that the machine tools needed may be around 50 thousand tractors.
“We’ll see what the needs are. We still have to calculate how much land we have, because modern agriculture cannot be avoided,” he said.
According to Amran, to be able to increase production of agricultural commodities, it can no longer be managed traditionally, such as by plowing fields with cows. For this reason, he said, the Ministry of Agriculture must promote modern agriculture.
“You have to use machine tools,” he concluded.
[Gambas:Video CNBC]
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