T

he government is confident that the current dry season will not affect the rice planting season, which will last from September until January, thanks to the country'€™s sufficient water supply, a top official has said.

Public Works and Public Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono said that 73 dams across the country, including the main 16 dams, would be able to supply sufficient water for the planting season.

At the country'€™s largest dam, Kedungombo in Central Java, the availability of water in the reservoir is much greater than in 2003, when the country was faced by one of the worst droughts in history, according to Basuki.

'€œTwo weeks ago, I checked [the conditions at the Kedungombo dam], the reservoir'€™s water level was between 86 and 87 meters, while the water level in 2003 reached only 73-74 meters,'€ Basuki told reporters, during a coordination meeting with the Agriculture Ministry.

He added that the Kedungombo dam irrigated 61,444 hectares of rice fields in the regencies of Boyolali, Sragen and Grobogan. '€œThe water will be sufficient for the planting season in September, and by the time the plants start to grow in November, the monsoon will come, so everything will be fine,'€ Basuki said.

The minister added that only around 110,000 hectares of agricultural land had been affected by drought so far this year, lower than the 250,000 hectares last year.

Separately, Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman said that during the dry season, the ministry would boost the national rice production in wetlands.

Data from the ministry showed that of a total of 34.3 million hectares of wetlands, around 19.9 million hectares, or 57.24 percent, has potential as farming land.

'€œWe will increase rice harvests in wetlands from once a year to twice a year. We expect to see an additional 1 million tons of rice from wetlands this year,'€ Amran said.

The ministry'€™s agricultural infrastructure and facilities director-general Sumarjo Gatot Irianto said the ministry would maximize rice production in wetlands located in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

'€œThere are 379,000 hectares [of wetlands] in South Sumatra alone. In Sumatra, the total wetlands amount to 536,000 hectares, while in Kalimantan there are 176,000 hectares,'€ Gatot said.

The ministry previously said that it had allocated Rp 880 billion (US$65.12 million) for anticipation measures to limit the impact of drought on the agriculture sector.

Amran said that at present, around 17,000 hectares of the total 9.2 million hectares of rice fields in Indonesia had suffered harvest failure due to prolonged drought. They were located in Central Java, Lampung and West Java, among other areas.

He said the government had anticipated the long dry spell, which began in December 2014, by, among others measures, distributing 21,000 water pumps to farmers, developing 1,000 embung (small artificial lakes) and repairing 1.3 million hectares of tertiary irrigation systems.

Amran said the government had expanded the coverage of rice production by 400,000 hectares during the period of Oct.-March, to compensate for harvest failures in several areas.