Foreign loans next generations' burden
Foreign loans next generations' burden
From Pikiran Rakyat
Indonesia, our beloved country with a population of over 200 million, is very rich in that it has abundant natural resources and minerals. Unfortunately, the people of Indonesia have not been able to process the natural wealth themselves. As a result, foreign companies have made much profit through profit-sharing schemes with the Indonesian government.
From my observation of the present condition of our well- educated people I can tell that there are enough well-experienced qualified Indonesian mining engineers currently working in foreign investment companies in Indonesia, and other qualified engineers at home, who would be able to work in Indonesian mining companies if Indonesia decided to begin to process the wealth themselves. I believe they would be willing to join future Indonesian mining exploration and processing companies as long as they would receive international standard salaries and allowances.
Accordingly, I wonder why we have not begun to process the wealth ourselves? What are we waiting for? I am kindly asking the present government and all Indonesian national leaders to start thinking of establishing national mining companies that will be employing Indonesian experts and engineers thus making Indonesia make profits from them rather than sign joint-venture agreements with foreign companies or rely on foreign countries' technology, expertise and capital.
I am sure that if we can process the natural wealth ourselves, we will gain billions of U.S. dollars for the country. This way we do not have to sign foreign loans any more, which from my observation already amounts to US$144 billion in total, which also means that each and every Indonesian citizen will have to repay the loans not less than $720 or equal to Rp 6,480,000. Very clearly those loans will be extremely burdensome to the younger generations of Indonesian people. And do not ask me who is to blame for all this?
Our country does not seem to be able to put an end to borrowing money from abroad thus indicating how very poor and disorganized our country has been before and after what we call the monetary crisis, I am morally obliged to urge the government and the House of Representatives and all parties concerned to immediately start designing concrete programs to put an end to burdening the people with foreign loans.
DEWI FA
Bandung