Improving Agricultural Market Performance:

Developing Agricultural Market Information Systems

•

Developing rural areas through the promotion of agricultural production and agro-industry,

by building capacity, developing infrastructure and enhancing access to information,

markets and financial services.

In addition, an important feature of the agricultural policy framework is the establishment of

medium-term (5-year) plans. While the MoA has the main responsibility for policy development

and implementation, several other central government ministries and agencies are involved, as

are local government agencies since decentralization (WTO, 2013). The current agricultural

policy looks to balance support for agricultural producers, stabilise food prices for consumers,

and ensure the availability of food at reasonable prices, while the existing intervention

mechanisms include national stockpiling, pricing policy, input subsidies (e.g. for seeds and

fertilisers), import measures (e.g. tariffs and requirements), and the RASTRA/RASKIN “rice for

the poor” distribution programme (ICA/COMCEC, 2017). There are several agricultural and food

market institutions, such as BULOG (marketing board), PTPN III and PT Pupuk Indonesia (both

state-owned economic enterprises), and COFTRA (licensed public warehousing company)

(ICA/COMCEC, ibid).

The main MIS which exist in the country are all based in the public sector. The host institutions

for MIS in Indonesia are Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), the Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS or

National Office of Statistics) and the Ministry of Trade (MoT). The Bureau of Logistics (Badan

Urusan Logistik or BULOG), which is a government-owned company, as well as the local office

of the World Food Programme (WFP) are also involved in providing market information.

This multiplicity of public sector MIS in a country is an experience which is not uncommon in

many developing countries, including cases from West Africa such as Ghana (Shepherd, 1997).

It is therefore, a case from which valuable lessons are expected in this review.

In Indonesia, provision of market information services is regulated under the Law of Statistics –

i.e. Act. No: 16/1997 and other related legislation such as Government Regulation (PP) 51/1999:

Operation Manajemen of Statistics Act. No: 32/2004. Under this law, the BPS has statutory

authority to coordinate the collection and dissemination of statistics, including price and other

market-relevant data (Nuryanti and Kadarmanto, 2015). Though each sector ministry (e.g.

Ministry of Agriculture) may have a statistics department, BPS exercises a coordination function.

6.2

MAPPING EXISTING MIS IN INDONESIA

6.2.1

GOVERNMENT-RUN MIS IN INDONESIA

The Ministry of Agriculture

oA) is the main provider of agricultural market information in

Indonesia. It’s Centre for Ag

ricu

ltural Data and Information Systems (CADIS) is the main unit

responsible for this functio

n 21

. The MoA, in addition to collecting, analysing and publishing

agricultural market inform

atio

n, is also involved in collecting other socio-economic and

technical data for policymaking purposes. District and provincial level staff of the MoA collect

price data at farmgate and from the main markets in rural and urban areas. The data collected

is processed at the Centre and shared with the BPS as well as other agencies.

The main crops

and livestock products reported on are:

http://pusdatin.setjen.pertanian.go.id/

;