Economist Mari looks towards home

Berni K. Moestafa, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Having spent at least half her life abroad, prominent economist Mari Elka Pangestu wants to return home to Indonesia, but just doesn't know when.

Born in Jakarta on Oct. 23, 1956, Mari moved to Australia when she was nine, then to Singapore, Australia, America, home to Indonesia, and is now in China.

During the 12 years she spent in Indonesia between the U.S. and China, Mari held positions as lecturer, researcher, and director, and is now regarded as one of the country's leading economists.

"Since I moved to China because of my husband's work, I don't work full-time at institutions or teach anymore. I work on research projects, but manage them from a distance," she said, sitting on the front porch of her old family house in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta.

The Internet is helping her to get connected with her work from her new home in Shanghai, where husband Adi Harsono was assigned in 1999 to manage the production of smart cards for a French-based company.

There is no shortfall of work for an economist like Mari, and as globalization takes root, the question of how free trade can spell prosperity for economies with completely different backgrounds has opened up new avenues for economists.

Since 1994, she and a group of researchers under the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) have worked on trade issues affecting the region. They now help advance discussions at the Asia Pacific Economic Corporation (APEC) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Mari's experiences have taken her to her most recent project, in which her background in economic development has a vital application: the United Nations Millennium Project.

The project aims to halve world poverty, develop trade for poor countries, ensure environmental sustainability, and other highly challenging goals by 2015 in what is known as the Millennium Development Goals.

"The objective of this Millennium Project is to try to make these proposals very concrete: what are the policy issues, and how to finance them?" Mari explained.

However, if last September's world summit on sustainable development has shown us anything, it is that the gap between rich and poor countries is insurmountably wide. Rich countries lag behind their promises to contribute more aid, just as poor countries are slow to stamp out corruption and to improve governance.

Mari admits the Millennium Goals are ambitious, but said the key was not to find a global strategy, but to create a strategy specific to each country. "Diagnose the problem better so you can find the appropriate solution. That's what this U.N. project is roughly about."

Mari studied economics at the same university at which her father Panglaykim had once taught, the Australian National University. She obtained her Masters Degree in economics from the university in 1980, in the meantime reaching her twelfth year of living in Australia, then achieved her Ph.D. from the University of California in America, where she lived until 1986.

Upon her return to Indonesia, she followed her late father's footsteps as a lecturer at the University of Indonesia (UI). She said her father wasn't trying to raise another academician, but added that it might run in her family anyway. "My eldest brother turned out to be an academician, too, in the field of microbiology. He's in Malaysia now."

In regards her field of choice, she muses, "I think I was influenced subconsciously by what my father did, but my interests also run to development issues, and that's how I turned to economics".

"We had a lot of discussions, my father and I. Actually, our views are different, since I am more market-oriented and I think he's more of the old school."

The old school, she says, believed in the government and state companies having strong roles in a market. Today, that view is being challenged by younger economists who think state role should be kept at a minimum.

Young Mari, however, mingled a lot with old academicians, as she was surrounded by her father's university colleagues. In fact, she said she received help in her studies from economic gurus such as Dorodjatun Kuntjoro-Jakti and Mohammad Sadli.

Mari remembers coming home on holidays where she would regularly meet her father's UI friends. "Pak Djatun (Dorodjatun) was always nice, he had all these ideas and advice, he probably forgot how influential he is."

Sadli was more of a mentor to her, although Mari believes he was one to many other aspiring economists as well. Upon her return from America, with a fresh Ph.D. added to her two prior degrees, Sadli told her, "I know you're smart, but you know it's not all about theories. How you say things is always as important -- the message," Mari remembers him saying.

Armed with this piece of advice, in the years that followed, she eventually came out of her father's shadow and came into her own as an economist.

She took up various research posts here and abroad, including a job as executive director for the independent think tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and occasionally served as a consultant to World Bank projects.

Life as an academician, she remarks, is interesting.

She describes the community of academicians as a very open one where sharing ideas was common and researchers helped one another.

"I hardly ever have a preconceived notion about something, and even if I do have a fixed idea about something, I'm still open to be proven wrong," she said.

That may be the result of her living in far-flung places across the globe, and Mari says she feels, naturally enough, "international".

Her two children, Raymond, 11, and Aria, nine, go to the international school in Shanghai and, like her, are learning to speak Chinese.

"I very much enjoy staying in China," she said, describing Shanghai as very cosmopolitan that, despite its population of 14 million, is a nice city to live in.

For those who think she has left Indonesia for good, Mari has asked to pass on this one last message: "One day, we expect that my husband will be sent back to Indonesia, so I can return to Indonesia, too."