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)