The Chairman of the Indonesian Rubber Council (Dekarindo) Aziz Pane revealed, there are banks from Europe who are interested in financing replanting or rejuvenation on rubber plantations so that replanting is expected to be done immediately to encourage the domestic rubber industry.
Because, in Indonesia the ratio of latex production in 1 hectare (ha) only gets 1 ton of latex, whereas in Vietnam and Thailand in 1 hectare it is capable of producing 2 tons of latex.
According to Aziz, there are already bank investors from Europe who want to finance all replanting, as long as the company can get the wood.
Replanting oil palm plantations is one of the efforts launched by the government to improve the quality of the domestic rubber industry since 2017. But this is constrained, because the government does not have sufficient funding to realize it.
Therefore, the government plans to do replanting by obtaining funding from the sale of rubber tree wood. So that the results of the sale of wood can be used at the same time to prosper farmers.
Aziz, who is the Chairperson of the Indonesian Tire Company Association (APBI), said that the rejuvenation problem was the expensive social cost, where if a farmer cut down his rubber tree he would not get any more income even though he still had to fulfill his daily needs.
Until 2019, Indonesia has recorded 3.4 million ha of rubber plantations. It is planned that 20% -30% of rubber plantations will be needed for rejuvenation.
Therefore, investors this time are interested in financing all replanting, provided that all wood is theirs. Aziz said, the plan was that the wood would be used as wood powder. ***
Okezone.com, 20/01/2020