it should be noted that available statistics do not in practice rigorously follow consistent water use class definition criteria rather they follow the main targets of the groundwater withdrawal provisions which means that rural drinking water supplied by irrigation wells may be included in irrigation use statistics whereas water from public water supplies but used for smallscale irrigation or for small business or industrial uses may be included under domestic use data on the breakdown of groundwater abstraction with respect to water use sectors are much scarcer than data on total abstraction and time series are virtually nonexistent in view of this as a first approximation it is assumed that the breakdown over the water use sectors does not vary much in time hence even data of ten years earlier could still be representative for