Ministry of Forestry is a department under the Government of Indonesia that is responsible for plantation and forestry matters, especially in three aspects of synergy, namely the protection, preservation, and utilization. MoF is headed by a Minister of Forestry (Minister of Forestry). This Department is implementing elements of the government, led by the Minister under and responsible to the President.

Forestry agency level Directorate-General felt unable to overcome the problems and the development of forestry development activities are increasing. Some of the administrative barriers affecting the implementation of forestry development include:

Directorate general scope is too narrow, so many problems that should be handled with the authority of a ministerial policy received less attention. As a result, the Directorate General of Forestry is often confronted with hierarchical problems, such as in conducting cooperation with other institutions of higher degree
Further consequence, perhaps on to the lower level. Directorate General of Forestry was forced to delegate much authority to the directorate of which should exceed. Thus, the directorate was involved also in line tasks and tasks of cross-sectoral / sub-sector, which is a lot going for forestry activities
The authority inherent in the general directorate level organizations were deemed too small in the face the problems that are wisdom, especially in conducting cooperation with other relevant agencies
Technical functional relationship between local and central, conducted through the Regional Office of Department (Agriculture), which due to different nature of the activities of each sub-sector, causing kekurangserasian
Limitations to develop a means of personnel occurs, because the bound on the number of formation for the general directorate level
In addition, there are limitations on the organizational unit, which is functionally acting as supervisory elements
Overall barriers caused frequent occurrence of the problems that are non-routine, which require special solutions

In addition, to achieve the objectives of forestry development required a base of departure and orientation with a broad horizon and thorough about forestry, which includes aspects of the implementation utilization, conservation of forest resources, and land rehabilitation.

Of these, the formation of the Forestry Department at PELITA IV is a logical consequence from the demands of the situation and the developments during that time, thus a new container-level department will not be able to accommodate the problems that diverse. This is in line with the President's speech on the formation of the Fourth Development Cabinet on March 16, 1983, as follows:

Therefore it is necessary to increase the number of departments by breaking some of the departments assessed the scope of his duty to gain greater attention and should be treated more intensively in later PELITA IV.

While the solution to the Department of Agriculture Department of Agriculture and Forestry Department, the President said:

This solution needs, because in PELITA IV on the one hand will continue to strive to increase food production such as agriculture, plantations, livestock, and fisheries, while on the other hand we must be able to take advantage of our natural wealth of forests for the maximum benefit of the people to remain and to implement rehabilitation and forest conservation.

Establishment of the Ministry of Forestry is very appropriate, because the forest with multiple functions can not be handled properly without an independent container. Similarly, the three aspects of forestry development (protection, preservation, and utilization) can be implemented in a mutually supportive, so can not be carried out separately by various departments. Seeing the importance of handling the three aspects of forestry development is the existence of the Ministry of Forestry is a basic requirement as a means in the context of forestry take off.