Rice output to drop this year: BPS says
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) predicted on Monday that the country's unhusked rice output would drop by 1.89 percent to 48.65 million tons this year, down from 49.56 million tons last year due to a decline in the area under rice.
"It is estimated that the area of paddy fields to be harvested in 2002 will fall 3.02 percent to 10.99 million hectares," it said in a prepared statement for the press.
A BPS official warned however that the drop in the rice output could be larger as the projection did not take account of the impact of the recent floods.
"Generally, rice output in the January - April period contributes 48.7 percent to total rice production. The current floods will have a major effect on this year's total output but we haven't calculated what it will be yet," the BPS's deputy director for balance and statistical analysis Kusumadi Saleh said.
The Ministry of Agriculture said earlier this month that the country's worst floods in decades had inundated some 120,000 hectares of paddy fields and damaged almost 300,000 tons of unhusked rice.
The ministry had earlier targeted Indonesia's 2002 unhusked rice output at 52 million tons.
The BPS said that last year's rice production decreased by 4.45 percent to 49.59 million tons from 51.9 million tons in 2000 because of the decrease in the area under rice and lower productivity.
The BPS explained that the area under rice decreased by 3.91 percent to 11.33 million hectares last year from 11.79 million hectares in 2000.
The agency added that productivity decreased 0.57 percent to 4.37 tons per hectare from 4.4 tons per hectare in 2000.
The BPS also forecast that the country's corn output would increase by 1.22 percent to 9.28 million tons in 2002, up from 9.17 million tons in 2001, due to an increase in productivity and the area planted.
The country's soybean production is estimated to rise to 910,000 tons this year from 820,000 tons in 2001 due to an expansion in area under soybeans.