How big is the commercial sector for FP in Indonesia?

Increases in the size of the private sector are sometimes interpreted as lowering dependency on donors. However, the private sector includes both commercial and non-commercial providers. An increase in the non-commercial sector signals a growth in dependency if client payments are low and donors cover most costs. This presentation will determine the percentage of women that get contraception from the commercial sector as compared with those classified private sector users. A key assumption is that a commercial provider will not provide a service for which price is below direct costs. Information on contraceptive use, source, wealth and prices paid for services was obtained from the 2002/3 DHS for Indonesia. Information on costs was obtained from the Reproductive Health Needs Assessment model supplemented by salary data. Our estimates indicate that the commercial sector for implants and injectables is considerable smaller than is the private sector. For sterilization the commercial sector is about 60% and for sterilization just over 70% of the private sector. The percentage of private sector users classified as commercial increases with wealth. For example, for the three lowest quintiles, less than half of private sector IUD users are commercial users whereas over 85% in the highest quintile used the commercial sector. The methodology is tested in Egypt, a country with information on commercial sector use, and there is close agreement between the DHS results and results using our methodology. We conclude that routine collection of price data would improve the classification of source of contraception.