I

magine Indonesia with a population of 470 million, nearly half a billion by 2060. Or perhaps this would be easier to picture: Jakarta with 24 million people by then. Nice and cosy?

That is what the country faces if the government - and also the citizens - fail to curb the annual rate of population growth, now reaching 1.3 percent.

"Ideally the growth rate should be reduced to 1.14 percent," said Ida Bagus Permana, head of the center for research and development of the National Family Planning Coordination Agency (BKKBN), recently.

If the 1.3 percent growth rate prevails, the population would jump from 235 million in 2010 to 470 millions by 2060 and 940 million by 2110, doubling every 50 years, said Permana.

It is feared Indonesia could face a population explosion, says Permana.

Over 200 years, the population of Indonesia has steadily grown from 18.3 million in 1800 to 40.2 million in 1900, to 205.8 million in 2000.

Over the past nine years, the population went up from 205 million to 230 million, he said, in a seminar on the statistical assumptions and framework for the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) medium-term plan for the period 2010-2014.

Permana said the world's population has jumped to 6.5 billion people now from six billion in 2000, five billion in 1987 and four billion in 1975.

"Family planning plays an important role. It could help reduce the poverty trap," he said. "Poor families having many children lead to more poverty."

The high population influenced the quality of life and the progress of the country, he reiterated.

BKKBN chairman Sugiri Syarief said the family planning program had been a success - the percentage of families accepting birth control had risen from 5 percent in 1970 to 48 percent in 1987 and 61 percent in 2007.

"But the decentralization system has somewhat slowed down the program as the authority to run the program has been handed down to regencies or municipalities," Sugiri said.

"We has been eager to pursue physical development, while forgetting basic social development - including family planning," he said.

He said the government had been supportive of the program, with its budget increasing from Rp 700 billion in 2006 to Rp 1.6 trillion in 2009, he said. "However, an adequate allocation should have reached Rp 3 trillion, and this was not even 0.1 percent of the national budget."

Nina Sardjunani, deputy chairwoman of Bappenas, said that family planning will be integrated with women's empowerment program.

"A fall in population would mean better quality for people," Nina said.

Muhadjir Darwin from the Center of Policy and Population Study of Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University, recommended close collaboration with NGOs to run the family planning program, instead of letting it be run by the regencies.