Indonesia gives more seized plantations to state palm oil company Agrinas

The plantations were seized by the government’s forestry task force as they were believed to be operating illegally in designated forest areas, Febrie Adriansyah, a senior official at the Attorney’s General Office and a task force member, was quoted as saying.

The 394,547ha given to Agrinas on 9 July were plantations in Central Kalimantan on the island of Borneo, as well as in Riau, North and South Sumatra provinces, the report on the same date said. They were previously controlled by 232 companies but the government did not name them.

Formed in January by the administration of President Prabowo Subianto through the restructuring of an infrastructure services firm, Agrinas had been managing around 221,000ha of plantations on behalf of the Attorney’s General Office since March, while the state investigated an alleged case of money laundering by the landowner, Duta Palma Group.

The other plantations managed by Agrinas were given to the firm by the forestry task force. With the newly added land, the total area managed by Agrinas would total over 833,000ha, Adriansyah said.

Agrinas chief executive Agus Sutomo said the company was assessing the status of each plantation. Of the 484,000ha Agrinas had inventorised, around 271,000ha were productive, while others were in varying degrees of damage, he told reporters.

At the time of the report, the company had a fresh fruit bunch (FFB) output level of 6,000 tonnes/day, he said.

Defence Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, who heads the forestry task force, said authorities had so far seized more than 2M ha of plantations in forest areas that were allegedly operating illegally across the country, including other crops as well as oil palm trees.

The task force was aiming to take over a total of 3M ha of land by August, which would be retained as palm oil or other crop plantations, or reforested, he added.

Tags: North Sumatra, South Sumatra, Indonesia, palm oil, Plantations, Agrinas Palma Nusantara, Central Kalimantan, Borneo, Riau