Jakarta – Indonesia's unhusked rice production is forecast to reach 48.65 million tonnes this year, 1.9 percent less than 2001, an Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) official said Monday.

"The lower rice production this year is estimated to be due to a shrinking of harvest areas," BPS deputy head for economic statistics, Slamet Mukeno said, according to the Detikcom online news service. But Mukeno could not give a figure on the total surface of rice planting this year.

He said that rice production in 2001 was estimated at 49.6 million tonnes of 4.45 percent compared to the 51.9 million tonnes in the previous year. The total surface planted with rice in 2001 reached 11.3 million hectares or 3.2 percent lower than the total in the previous year, he said.

Mukeno said that the extensive floods that have hit several rice-producing regions across the nation this year will also have an effect, but not a significant one, on total output.