JAKARTA: Indonesia plans to invest 371 trillion rupiah (US$22 billion) in agricultural processing for several commodities in a bid to create eight million jobs, agriculture minister Amran Sulaiman said on Friday.

Developing domestic processing is one of president Prabowo Subianto’s top priorities in a drive to achieve 8 per cent economic growth.

“The total plan of 371 trillion rupiah will be invested in the agriculture, food, livestock, horticulture, and plantation sectors,” said Amran in a statement.

Amran added that a big portion of the investment would be allocated for plantation commodities such as sugar cane, cocoa, and cashews.

“Processing of agricultural commodities has a much greater impact on job creation. Together, we want to accelerate this,” said investment minister Rosan Roslani after a meeting with Amran.

In addition to the processing investment, the government is planning a 20 trillion rupiah investment to boost chicken and egg supplies for its free meals programme.

The programme, rolled out in January, was a major election campaign promise by Prabowo, expected to reach around 70 million recipients by the end of this year.

“We will supply, so that there will be no shortage of eggs and chicken in the future. We are preparing for it now,” Amran said.

(US$1 = 16,570.0000 rupiah) (Reporting by Dewi Kurniawati Editing by Mark Potter)