How official statistics measure fisheries across Flores

How large is Flores’s documented fisheries economy? The available official figures show that fisheries are measured in different ways: BPS publishes marine capture-fisheries tables by regency and commodity, while the Fisheries Ministry reports programme-specific production. For Flores and nearby islands, readers should therefore treat each number as a defined dataset, not as a single island-wide total.

What does the official BPS data measure?

BPS East Nusa Tenggara lists separate tables for marine capture fisheries by regency or municipality and main commodity, and for capture-fisheries production by subsector and regency or municipality, according to its 2025 statistical-data pages.

That structure matters because “fisheries production” can refer to different subsectors and locations. The BPS tables are designed to identify where production is recorded and which commodity is counted, rather than provide one undifferentiated figure for Flores.

What does the Fisheries Ministry report?

The Fisheries Ministry’s 2025 performance report gives programme-specific production figures for East Nusa Tenggara, including 44.86 tonnes for East Flores and 863.90 tonnes for Ende in the listed dataset, according to the ministry’s report published in 2025.

The same report also lists Lembata at 2.29 tonnes in that dataset, according to the Fisheries Ministry, 2025. These figures should not be added together because the report’s excerpt identifies them as entries attached to particular programme and location records, not a complete Flores-wide total.

Why are there different numbers?

The Fisheries Ministry separately reported national 2025 capture-fisheries production of 7,349,676 tonnes, describing the figure as very provisional and not yet validated, according to its 2025 Directorate General of Capture Fisheries performance report.

That qualification explains why official fisheries figures need their labels and year retained. A ministry programme report, a BPS statistical table and a provisional national production series may cover different activities, geographies and stages of validation.

What is the clearest takeaway for Flores?

Flores’s fisheries story cannot be reduced responsibly to one number without specifying the subsector, regency, commodity, reporting programme and reference year. The official record confirms that East Flores, Ende and nearby Lembata appear in fisheries datasets, but the sources found here do not provide one validated, island-wide total.

Sources

• Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries
• BPS-Statistics Indonesia, East Nusa Tenggara