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Indonesia hands over confiscated palm plantations in state-owned company

Indonesia hands over confiscated palm plantations in state-owned company

Officials said that the Indonesian government will give more land seized during investigations into illegal palm plantations, to Agrinas Palma Nusantara. This company is now a major player in the industry.

Indonesia, the top palm oil producer in the world, has launched a campaign to improve the governance of its palm oil and forest cultivation. This comes after criticisms that palm oil plantations are the main cause of deforestation.

Febrie Adriansyah, an official with the Attorney General, said that on Wednesday, prosecutors handed over to Agrinas 536,211 acres (216,997 ha) of confiscated plantation areas from 109 companies. This is in addition to the 221,000 hectares they handed over earlier this week.

Agrinas will continue to run the plantations.

The task force, set up by Prabowo Sjamsoeddin to identify illegal plantations within designated forest areas, is led by Defence Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin.

The area that the task force confiscated is approximately 1 million hectares.

Sjafrie, a reporter, said that the authorities will conduct a verification for the remainder of the area. They aim to give more plantations to Agrinas.

Agrinas will be the largest plantation company if it is allowed to control all 1,000,000 hectares.

Zulkifli hasan, the Coordinating Minister for Food Supply, said this week that Agrinas' initial 221,000 hectares of land would need upgrading or rejuvenation.

A task force official stated that areas found to no longer be viable for commercial operations may be reforested. (Reporting and writing by Bernadette Cristina Munthe, Fransiska Nanangoy; editing by John Mair; Sonali Paul; Saad Sayeed).

(source: Reuters)