Jakarta (VNA) – Indonesia’s rice production in 2023will reduce by 650,000 tonnes or 2.05% compared to that of last year, accordingto Indonesia’s Central Statistics Agency (BPS).
This year's rice production is estimated to reach 30.9 milliontonnes. BPS’s data shows that the rice production from October to Decemberis forecast to decrease 10.92% to 4.78 million tonnes from last year’sproduction of 5.37 million tonnes.
Speaking at a press conference on October 16, acting head of BPSAmalia Adininggar Widyasanti said that the country’s rice production area isestimated to be reduced by 2.45% from 10.45 million ha last year to 10.2million ha this year.
Amalia said that the reduced rice area is mostly in three majorrice-producing provinces – West Java, Central Java and South Sulawesi.
Prolonged droughts caused crop losses in regions in Indonesia.
Amalia added that similar to Indonesia, other rice-producingcountries such as India, Thailand and Vietnam also face a decline in output dueto El Niño and drier weather.
Previously, the Indonesian Government directed the StateLogistics Agency (Bulog) to buy an additional 2 million tonnes of rice nextyear to ensure national rice reserves and promptly respond to possible poorharvest season due to the influence from El Niño.
Currently, Vietnam and Thailand will be two key rice suppliersfor Indonesia this year./.
