Indonesian sugar output may hit 2.5-3.0 million tonnes by 2007, from current year estimates of 1.8 million, if farm aids are improved and imports gradually reduced, an industry official said on Thursday.
"Current farming practices and taxes on sugar imports will not do the trick," Faruk Bakrie, chairman of the Indonesian Sugar Association, told Reuters on the sidelines of a trade conference in Malaysia.
"We need to really improve cultivation methods and tighten imports further to hit around 2.5 to 3.0 million tonnes in the next three years," he said.
Indonesia, Southeast's largest sugar importer, needs at least 3.2 million tonnes a year for domestic consumption. But local production only stood at around 1.6 million tonnes last year, with the balance imported mainly from Thailand and Brazil.
Just a decade ago, Indonesian sugar production was around 2.5 million tonnes a year.
But the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis ravaged the Indonesian economy and commodity prices. The cash crunch saw sugar cane farmers applying cheap and less-yielding cultivation methods.
Changes in government agricultural policy meant farmers could plant any crop they thought would pay better.
Sugar cane fields steadily shrunk from 387,000 hectares in 1997 to 335,000 by 2001 as growers switched to more remunerative crops like oil palm.
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