JAKARTA - PT Pupuk Indonesia (Persero) ensures that it continues to improve its capabilities and services in the distribution of subsidized fertilizers in a sustainable manner. One of them is socialization to increase the understanding of distributors and kiosks regarding regulations, to support the application of digitalization of kiosks to make it easier for farmers to buy subsidized fertilizer.

Pupuk Indonesia's SVP Corporate Secretary, Wijaya Laksana stated that the capacity building and distribution service for subsidized fertilizers would involve various parties, from distributors, kiosks, to agricultural offices in various regions. This is in line with the recommendation of the National Police Special Task Force (Satgassus) regarding subsidized fertilizers in Ogan Komering Ilir (OKI) Regency, South Sumatra, which was conveyed by the Head of the National Police Headquarters Task Force Team, Hotman Tambunan, Sunday (30/7/2023).

"In principle, we always provide outreach to kiosks and distributors on a regular basis, because we do have representative offices in a number of provinces. Apart from that, we also have hundreds of field marketing officers spread throughout the district," explained Wijaya in Jakarta, Tuesday (1/8/2023).

Wijaya further explained that Pupuk Indonesia as a producer distributes subsidized fertilizer according to the allocation set by the Government. As of July 28, 2023, the realization of distribution of subsidized fertilizer nationally has reached 3.83 million tons, the details of which are Urea of 2.25 million tons and NPK. 1.55 million tons. Meanwhile, nationally subsidized fertilizer stocks available at line III warehouses or at the district level were recorded at 853,255 tonnes or 353 percent of the minimum requirement set by the Government. As for the details, Urea was 513,604 tons and NPK was 339,651 tons as of July 31, 2023.

“Absorption of subsidized fertilizers will usually increase again when entering the rainy season which usually occurs at the end of the year. On this occasion, the stalls will again increase their stock," he explained.

Increasing the ability and service for distributing subsidized fertilizers, continued Wijaya, was also carried out by implementing kiosk digitization. Until now, Pupuk Indonesia has conducted trials of kiosk digitization in 5 provinces, namely Bali, Aceh, Bangka Belitung, Riau and South Kalimantan. In the near future, Pupuk Indonesia together with the Ministry of Agriculture will continue to expand the area of implementing digital kiosks.

According to Wijaya, digitizing the kiosk will drastically change the kiosk administration process, from previously filling out lots of paper forms, now everything is recorded digitally and online in an application. Thus, every subsidized fertilizer redemption transaction is recorded in real time, thus increasing transparency to the accuracy of subsidized fertilizer recipients.