Govt defends 8.07% growth figure for 1995

JAKARTA (JP): The government, responding to critics, yesterday defended its figure for economic growth of 8.07 percent last year, claiming that it was supported by sound statistics.

Kusmadi Saleh, a deputy chairman of the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS), said here yesterday that his agency guaranteed the validity of the data used to calculate last year's economic growth, including the data on the agricultural sector, which has drawn particular fire from analysts.

Last week, BPS announced that Indonesia's gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 8.07 percent last year, as compared to 7.48 percent in 1994, while its per capita income rose to US$1,023 from $920. The figures for last year's GDP growth were criticized earlier this week by the Econit economic advisory group, which questioned the validity of the government's estimates, saying that they were not supported by sound statistics.

"If they question the methodology we used to process the data, this is still all right; we welcome any input to improve our methodology," Kusmadi yesterday said at a press conference, organized by the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas). "However, when they questioned the validity of the data, all we can say is that we published the data as we found it."

Econit says last year's economic growth projection of 8.07 percent was too high, contending that a growth rate of 7.7 percent would be closer to the truth.

Econit specifically questioned the government's figure for the agricultural sector's growth of 3.96 percent last year as this sector recorded only 0.55 percent growth in 1994.

The agriculture sector contributed 17.19 percent to last year's gross domestic product.

BPS said last week that the high growth of the agriculture sector was driven mainly by the food subsector, which grew by 4.46 percent last year. This subsector dropped by 2.14 percent in 1994.

Econit said it was odd for the food subsector to be credited with such high growth for last year, considering that during that year Indonesia suffered severe shortages of foodstuffs, which caused soaring prices for foodstuffs and the increase in imports, especially of rice.

Arsjad Anwar, an expert at Bappenas, contended that the rapid growth of the agricultural sector, especially for the food subsector, was not strange at all.

Indonesia, Arsjad said, experienced similar high growth rates in the agricultural sector a few years ago. This sector, for example, grew by 4.9 percent in 1989 and 6.26 percent in 1992, while the food subsector grew by 4.46 percent and 7.14 percent respectively.

Arsjad explained that high growth rates in the agricultural sector, especially the food subsector, in 1989 and 1992, were preceded by serious drops in rice output in 1988 and 1991.

"Similarly, rice output dropped in 1993 and in 1994, and had to be augmented by imports. When it recovered to its normal level last year, growth seemed very high. That's normal," Arsjad said.

According to official data, production of unhusked rice dropped from 48.2 million tons in 1992 to 46.6 million tons in 1994, before recovering to 49.8 tons last year.

Chairil A. Rasahan, head of the planning bureau at the Ministry of Agriculture, explained that last year's high rice output was the result of increasing acreage of rice cultivation, the improvement of irrigation, the increasing use of tablet fertilizer and high rainfall.

He said the area of rice fields under cultivation rose by 745,330 hectares to 11.48 million hectares last year from 10.73 million hectares in 1994.

The improvement of irrigation in Java and Bali alone affected 150,000 hectares of rice fields last year and 216,000 hectares in the 1994/1995 fiscal year.

The introduction of tablet urea fertilizer also helped increase rice output last year, Chairil said. Its usage covered 1.4 million hectares of rice fields in Java and Bali last year. (rid)