Concrete measures

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