Black market aggravating crisis, ex-minister warns
JAKARTA (JP): Black market activities over the past three years have contributed to the worsening of the economic crisis, former manpower minister Bomer Pasaribu said.
Bomer urged all parties to pay serious attention as the black market has grown robustly over the last three years.
He contended that awareness toward black market activities should be given equal priority as the focus on improving economic fundamentals, for the effects were almost equally as debilitating.
"Corruption, smuggling, illegal logging, narcotics and trade in bogus academic titles are just five of 12 illegal activities which are growing robustly in the reform era," he said here on Thursday.
The other seven were collusive and nepotistic practices, piracy in Indonesian waters, prostitution, the distribution of pornographic CDs and VCDs, bribery of the judiciary, money politics and gambling.
Bomer, also chairman of the Center for Labor and Development Studies (CLDS), said besides paying no taxes, these illicit businesses had affected the labor market and employment.
He said further that based on secondary data collected by CLDS, the prevalent black market was related to the continuing legal and political uncertainty, ineffective state institutions, especially the government and the legislature, and security instability.
"The black market during the New Order era reached only around 4 percent (of domestic economic activity) because strict law and order were maintained," he said, while estimating that currently the black market accounts for over one-third of domestic economic activity.
Bomer pointed out that the absence of stiff legal sanctions against corruptors had contributed to the rise of corruption to alarming levels.
"It isn't unexpected that several international institutions have ranked Indonesia second on the list of the most corrupt countries in the world," he said.
Bomer quipped that the government should build more prisons before applying a reversal of the burden of proof within the legal system.
"If the new investigation system is enforced, half of the law enforcers could be jailed because of their alleged involvement."
Bomer further noted that according to data from the forestry and marine resources ministries, the government lost US$8.9 billion due to illegal logging and $12 billion from illegal fishing in 1999.
He further charged that Indonesia was now ranked fourth in the list of narcotics supplier countries in Asia and 10th in the world.
"We can imagine the debilitating impact of the narcotics trade within the country over the next three decades if our younger generation consumes narcotics," he said.
He warned that Indonesia might be on the verge of losing a generation due to a combination of a weak education system caused by conflicts in numerous regions, the large number of refugees and the narcotics trade.
On the trade in phony academic titles, Bomer remarked that a doctorate could easily be obtained at a cost of between Rp 10 million to Rp 15 million.
"Numerous local and international educational institutions that have no official permit from the government are intensively offering various academic titles through media advertisements," he said.
There is an allegation that the practice has become so prolific that recently an academic institution also offered a fast-track PhD to Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri and Tresna Dermawan, chairman of the supervisory board of private universities in West Java.
Ronny R. Nitibhaskara, chairman of the supervisory board of private universities in Jakarta, conceded recently that numerous educational institutions had offered business management diplomas, masters and PhD programs without official permits from the relevant authorities. (rms)