By Bernadette Christina
JAKARTA (Reuters) -Indonesia on Wednesday handed over nearly 400,000 hectares (988,000 acres) of seized palm oil plantations to Agrinas Palma Nusantara, giving the new state company a sizeable land bank that could make it one of the world’s biggest oil palm growers.
The plantations were seized by the government’s forestry task force because authorities believe they were operating illegally in designated forest areas, said Febrie Adriansyah, a senior official at the Attorney’s General Office, who is also a member of the task force.
Agrinas is a fast-growing new palm oil company, formed in January by the administration of President Prabowo Subianto through the restructuring of an infrastructure services firm.
Since March, Agrinas has managed some 221,000 hectares of plantations on behalf of the AGO while the state pursues a money laundering case against its owner, Duta Palma Group.
The rest of the plantations managed by Agrinas were given to the firm by the forestry task force.
With the new addition, the total area under Agrinas’ care would reach over 833,000 hectares, Febrie said during the handover ceremony.
The 394,547 hectares given to Agrinas on Wednesday were plantations in Central Kalimantan on the island of Borneo, as well as in Riau, North and South Sumatra.
They were previously controlled by 232 companies but the government did not name them.
Speaking on the sidelines of the ceremony, Agrinas chief executive Agus Sutomo said the company is still assessing the status of each plantation.
Of the 484,000 hectares Agrinas has inventorised, some 271,000 hectares are productive, while others were in varying degrees of damage, he told reporters.
The company’s current output level is 6,000 metric tons of fresh fruit bunches per day, he said.
Defence Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, who heads the forestry task force, said authorities had so far seized more than 2 million hectares of illegally-run plantations in forest areas across the country, including other crops as well as oil palm trees.
The task force is aiming to take over a total of 3 million hectares by August, which will either be retained as palm oil and other crop plantations or reforested, he said.
(Reporting by Bernadette Christina; Writing by Gayatri Suroyo; Editing by Martin Petty, David Stanway and Stephen Coates)
