Workers shift to industry as farming sector shrinks

Workers shift to industry as farming sector shrinks

MANILA (AFP): The shrinking Indonesian agricultural sector is
forcing farm workers to shift to industrial jobs, a Jakarta-based
think-tank said in a paper presented here yesterday.

Agriculture's contribution to the domestic economy has dropped
to 16 percent from 30 percent in the 1970s, said Tubagus
Feridhanusetyawan, fellow at the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS).

A series of economic deregulation measures in the 1980s led to
the expansion of low-skilled, export-oriented manufacturing
sectors, he told a regional conference here.

"As a result there has been massive labor movement from the
agricultural sector," he said, without giving figures.

"The problem was that the location of the factories were
mostly in non-rural areas so that these expanding, low-skilled
industries have driven away the labor from the agricultural
sector in rural areas."

Feridhanusetyawan said most factories for textiles, clothing
and footwear were in big cities like Jakarta and Bandung.

"The government should create incentives for investment in
small and medium scale labor-intensive industries to absorb this
labor surplus," he said.

"mee creation of rural employment should be promoted so that
farmers could participate in off-farm work without migrating to
the urban areas," the analyst added..

The study, which he prepared with fellow CSIS analyst Mari
Pangestu, was presented at an agricultural policy conference of
the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum here.

APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong
Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the
Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan,
Thailand and the United States.