JAKARTA – Indonesia is estimated to have a total rice production surplus throughout 2023 of 0.28 million tonnes, but will continue to experience a deficit until the end of the year.
This was conveyed by the Head of the Statistics Indonesia (BPS) Amalia Adininggar Widyasanti at a press conference held on Monday (16/10) in Jakarta.
Amalia said that Indonesia had experienced a rice production deficit since July, with the first deficit amounting to 0.07 million tons.
The deficit was reduced to 0.03 million tonnes in August, but deepened again to 0.09 million tonnes in September.
The rice production deficit is expected to deepen in the last three months of 2023, with a deficit in October of 0.5 million tons, November of 0.95 million tons, and December of 1.45 million tons.
The condition of surplus or deficit in rice production itself is determined by reducing the amount of rice production with rice consumption by the population and does not include imports and exports.
In this case, rice production was recorded to have decreased. Rice production for the January–September 2023 period was recorded at 26.11 million tonnes, 0.22 percent less than the same period last year (26.17 million tonnes).
The rice production for October–December 2023 is also estimated to decrease, from 5.37 million tonnes in the same period last year to 4.78 million tonnes.
In this way, it is estimated that rice production in 2023 will only reach 30.90 million tons, down 2.05 percent from last year’s rice production which reached 31.54 million tons.
It should be noted that the amount of rice production is influenced by the rice harvest area throughout Indonesia which, unfortunately, has been recorded to decrease.
The five provinces with the highest decrease in harvested area in September 2023 compared to September 2022 were South Sulawesi (25.64 thousand hectares), West Java (17.87 thousand hectares), Central Java (10.77 thousand hectares), Banten (7.83 thousand hectares), and East Nusa Tenggara (2.63 thousand hectares).
Based on time, the rice harvest area in the January–September 2023 period was 8.66 million hectares, down 0.38 percent from 8.69 million hectares in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, the rice harvest area in October–December 2023 is estimated to only reach 1.54 million hectares, down 12.67 percent from 1.76 million hectares in the same period last year.
In this way, Indonesia’s rice harvest area this year is estimated to reach 10.20 million hectares, or a decrease of 2.45 percent from the 10.45 million hectares recorded last year.
Amalia emphasized that she hopes this data can be taken into consideration by stakeholders in determining future policies.
