Jakarta is pressing private companies to fund the imports – an unorthodox approach causing concern amongst the business community in South-East Asia’s largest economy. — Reuters
JAKARTA: The once-empty barns of the Laras Ati milk cooperative in Kuningan, West Java, are filled with the recent arrival of more than 200 pregnant spotted Holstein-Friesian cows from Australia under President Prabowo Subianto’s ambitious plan to ratchet up milk production.
The centrepiece of a programme to provide free meals to 83 million children and expectant mothers, the plan calls for importing a million dairy cows over five years, at a cost of nearly US$3bil, to lift the size of the country’s dairy herd more than four-fold from 220,000 now.
