TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo is planning to plant 700,000 hectares worth of sugarcane, which will be carried out by state-owned plantation firm PT Perkebunan Nusantara X (PTPN X). The purpose of the program is to become self-sufficient-in-producing sugar in the next five years.

According to the President, the total land space that has been successfully acquired currently amounts to 180,000 hectares.

The sugarcane plantation area is said to be spread throughout Indonesia. Currently, said Jokowi, only West Java, Central Java, and East Java have fertile soil quality for sugar cane cultivation.

“We will search outside of Java island as 700,000 hectares is not a small feat, but we will attempt our hardest to prepare it,” said the President in a press conference aired by the Presidential Secretariat Office via Youtube on Friday, November 4, 2022.

In addition to pursuing the status of self-sufficiency in sugar, the President strongly hinted that the government would process the sugarcane into bioethanol 5 (E5) and bioethanol 10 (E10) products.

Once sugar self-sufficiency is achieved, said Jokowi, the processing of sugar cane into ethanol will be carried out by PT Energi Agro Nusantara (Enero) in Mojokerto, East Java.

"We will start later with E5 first, E5 goes first, E10, then E20," said Jokowi. The government also plans to process the palm oil raw material for cooking oil into biodiesel 20 (B20) and biodiesel 30 (B30).

M JULNIS FIRMANSYAH

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