Germans to swap debt for education program

Germans to swap debt for education program

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Indonesian and German governments will sign on Tuesday an
agreement allowing the former to swap debt worth 25.6 million
euros owed to Germany for an education program.

The agreement will be signed by credit agency Kreditanstalt
fuer Wiederaufbau (KfW), on behalf of the German government and
the Indonesian ministry of finance, the German embassy said in a
statement, adding that Minister of Finance Boediono and the
Charge d'Affairs ad interim of Germany, Herman Sausen, would
witness the signing.

It was the first bilateral debt swap agreement to be signed by
the Indonesian and German governments, the embassy said.

Under the "Debt Swap for Education" agreement, the German
government will cancel 25.6 million euros (about Rp 230 billion)
of Indonesian debts provided that 50 percent of that amount is
invested by the Indonesian government in a program to promote
science education in the country.

Both sides have decided to improve the training of science
teachers at primary schools in 17 provinces of Indonesia, the
embassy said.

More than 510 new training centers will be built and equipped
to offer better conditions and facilities for training of science
teachers, it said.

This program will be directly linked to the ongoing
Indonesian-German development cooperation project, called SEQIP,
which also focuses on the improvement of science teaching and
learning at 33,000 schools. The SEQIP project is jointly executed
by KfW, another German agency GTZ and Indonesia's Ministry of
Education.