Government Offers Land Swap Scheme to PTPN III

Forest area exchange scheme is a change of permanent production forest or limited production forest into other use area (APL). In return, the applicant of this scheme must look for replacement APL to be converted into permanent forest area.
PTPN III, as the holding company of the state plantation business, recorded that the concession of its subsidiaries, which is indicated to enter the forest area, is as wide as 38.763 hectares (ha). On the contrary, the land has obtained a title for right to cultivate (HGU) which is supposed to be released from the forest area.
“The settlement process must be in accordance with the rules. If it violates, then the forest area exchange scheme must be used,” said the General Director for Forestry Planology of KLHK, San Afri Awang to Bisnis.com, Tuesday (4/25/2017).
Awang could not make sure whether the entire 38.763 ha area managed by the subsidiaries of PTPN III violated the rules. For that, he said the history of the issuance of permit for the land should be reviewed first.
Separately, the Director of Human Resource and Public Relation of PTPN III, Seger Budiarjo, claimed that the concession of the company, which entered the forest area, was mostly caused by the change in regulation of spatial planning. When the subsidiaries of PTPN III had obtained HGU, the forestry authority later on determined it as a forest area.
PTPN III, Seger continued, has sent a letter to KLHK to look for a solution for this problem. He also requested that KLHK could carry out demarcation first so that it would no longer be an indication.
“We are very cooperative to look for a solution because the plantation that is indicated to have entered the area already has plants,” Seger said.
Currently, the 14 companies that are included in the PTPN Group manage 1.18 million hectares (ha) of plantation to cultivate agribusiness commodities such as oil palm, sugarcane, rubber, cocoa, and coffee. Oil palm is the largest income contributor for the state-owned company.
Last year, PTPN III as a group produced 2.8 million tons of CPO or 9% of total national production, which reached 31 million tons. Based on the data of the Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2015, PTPN III managed 750.160 ha of oil palm plantation or 6.63% of 11.3 million ha area of oil palm plantation in Indonesia.
http://industri.bisnis.com/read/20170425/99/647957/pemerintah-tawarkan-skema-tukar-lahan-pada-ptpn-iii