Concrete measures

The Washington Post reported yesterday (Thursday) that an (unnamed) International Monetary Fund official had expressed his dissatisfaction over the economic reform measures taken by the Indonesian government. The international monetary institution reportedly considered Indonesia to be lacking in sincerity in its efforts to improve the country's economy. Among other things, Indonesia was seen to be continuing to maintain industries which squander foreign exchange and protecting the business interests of select groups, remained reluctant to strive for a budget surplus and was reluctant to raise taxes and abolish oil fuel subsidies. Those, according to the IMF official, are among the conditions set by the IMF for disbursement of the entire US$43 billion aid package.

It is this kind of news that apparently causes the market to continue to be volatile and the rupiah to lose value. Our economists and government officials are saying that what we are experiencing at present is a lack of confidence in the rupiah. However, considering that even people who have nothing to do with the dollar trade are panicking, it seems that we are faced with a larger problem. What we are experiencing at present is better described as a lack of confidence in the economy, and not just the rupiah.

If this is the case, then the government should immediately move to take concrete economic reform measures. And because economic matters in this country are very closely related to politics, political reform measures are unavoidable as well. Both economic and political reform manifest themselves in the presence of transparent, antimonopolistic, antidiscriminatory and antiprotectionist policies and in a willingness to be controlled by society or its representative institutions.

Cliche? Certainly. But it is cliche notions such as these that are at the root of the problem that we are now compelled to confront. And so far this central problem has never been seriously tackled. In a situation such as the present, mere calls on the public not to panic or efforts to calm people by telling them that the situation will soon improve will clearly not be effective. What people are waiting for are concrete measures.

-- Republika, Jakarta