ASEAN+3 agrees to form joint rice reserves

Antara News, Wednesday, October 27, 2010 01:33 WIB

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - ASEAN member states and China, Japan and South Korea (ASEAN+3) have agreed to form joint rice reserves in anticipation of climate change-induced food scarcity.

The agreement was reached at the 10th meeting of ASEAN+3 agriculture and forestry ministers (AMAF+3) held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Oct 23-25, Indonesian Agriculture Minister Suswono said here on Tuesday.

"AMAF+3 has agreed to formalize ASEAN plus Three Emergency Rice Reserve (APTERR) into a permanent institute to address food and humanity emergency in the ASEAN+3 region," he said.

Under the agreement, each ASEAN+3 member state was required to build rice reserves according to their respective condition, he said.

In total, the joint rice reserves from ASEAN+3 member states would reach 787 thousand tons with 400 thousand tons and 300 thousand tons respectively from China and Japan, he said.

Indonesia itself had agreed to set aside 12 thousand tons as rice reserves and the rest from other member states, he said.

Given the joint rice reserves, if any of the member states faced food scarcity they could benefit from the rice reserves to meet their domestic needs, he said.

But he added that the absence of agreement from Singapore which still had to consult their parliament posed an obstacle to the effort to formalize APTERR.

The AMAF+3 agriculture and forestry ministers gave the AMAF+3 Senior Officials Meeting until the next two months to complete the APTERR agreement, he said.

"Hopefully, the agreement could be signed and implemented as soon as possible," he said.

At the 32nd AMAF meeting, the ministers attached the significance of joint response, mitigation and adaptation to address the impact of climate change.

"Indonesia underscored the need to form a climate change center and expressed its readiness to host the center," he said.