Oil Palm Smallholders in Aceh Prepares to Replant

Oil palm smallholders in Aceh province will shortly replant their plantation as they have signed funding contract with the Indonesia Oil Palm Plantation Fund Management Agency (BPDPKS) and banks. Based on the contract they signed at Aceh’s Agriculture and Plantation Office, Unit II, Thursday, 15 February 2019, BPDPKS will disburse a grant of Rp25 million per hectares and banks will provide soft loans. Smallholders who receive grant from BPDPKS under Oil Palm Smallholders Replanting program (known as PSR) are member of five cooperatives. They are Koperasi Krueng Tadu Nagan Raya, KSU Wangi Sari Selamat Jaya Aceh Tamiang, KSU Wassalam II Aceh Tamiang, KSU Usaha Bersama Aceh Tamiang, and KP Mitra Aceh Jaya. Banks which provides loans are Bank Aceh Cabang Aceh Tamiang, Bank Aceh Cabang Nagan Raya, and Bank Syariah Mandiri Aceh Jaya. Rino Aprino of BPDPKS said, the cooperatives had been assessed to review the feasibility and they had been confirmed to receive replanting fund facility. “All legal documents are complete and the grants are able to disbursed. That’s why we signed the contract,” he said. According to A. Hanan, Head of Aceh’s Agriculture and Plantation Office who is also Head of Aceh’s PSR Team, BPDPKS disbursed Rp59 billion grants in total to support replanting of 2,362 hectares smallholders’ oil palm plantations in Aceh. All grants are directly transferred to farmers’ account. On December 2018, two cooperatives that operates 642 hectares plantation to be replanted had also received Rp16 billion of funding support from BPDPKS. Hanan said there are 14,259.27 hectares plantation to be replanted in Aceh this year, doubled from last year of 12.258 hectares. “Replanting quota for Aceh has risen 16.33%,” he said. (Source: popularitas.com)