Sjarifudin defends economic growth figures

Sjarifudin defends economic growth figures

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Agriculture Sjarifudin Baharsjah
yesterday dismissed critics of the government's estimate of
Indonesia's economic growth, saying that the figures were based
on official data collected by the Central Bureau of Statistics.

Sjarifudin insisted that the data used to obtain the figures
on the country's economic growth were valid and that the
agricultural sector was in fact the main contributor to the
economic growth.

"Agricultural subsectors showed sound growth last year. And
the largest contributor, which accounted for 85 percent of the
whole agricultural sector, was rice," he said.

Sjarifudin was responding to criticism from the Econit
advisory group which said earlier this week that the 8.07 percent
economic growth calculated by the government was an
overestimation, particularly that concerning the agricultural
sector.

The group said the growth of the agricultural sector last year
could not be as high as the estimated 3.96 percent, considering
the reality in the country and official data released by the
Central Bureau of Statistics.

Econit also considered the overly large value put on
agriculture in the calculations made the country's Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) seem high.

Furthermore, the agency calculated that the growth of rice
production, which contributed the most to the food subsector, was
actually lower than that estimated by the government.

The huge rice imports last year signified that domestic rice
production had declined, Econit said.

The agency concluded that an economic growth of 7.7 percent
was more realistic for the country in 1995, based on official
figures and facts.

Sjarifudin insisted yesterday that last year's rice production
was high, thus the government's estimates were "rational".

He considered the fact that Indonesia imported rice last year
had nothing to do with the estimates of the agricultural sector's
GDP.

"We are talking about production here, not imports. The two
are totally unrelated. Agricultural GDP is based on the value of
all agricultural products and not on the amount of their
imports," he said.

Since the contribution of rice to the agricultural sector was
the largest, he said, last year's rice production growth of
almost 7 percent was significant to the sector's overall growth.

"I'm not too worried about such criticism because our
calculations are based on figures that are collected by the
statistics bureau from across the country, and not on figures we
make up ourselves," he said. (pwn)