Goverment says no threat from World Bank

Goverment says no threat from World Bank

JAKARTA (JP): The government denied reports on Thursday that
the World Bank had threatened to stop funding the country's
social safety net program because of the ineffective distribution
system.

State Minister of National Development Planning Boediono,
commenting on newspaper reports, said the bank had not lodged an
official complaint about the government's system in aiding those
affected badly by the economic turmoil.

"I don't see the comments as a threat... there has not been
anything official," Boediono, who is also the chairman of the
National Development Planning Board (Bappenas), was quoted by
Antara as saying.

Kompas quoted an unnamed source close to the bank as saying
that it had threatened to halt funds for the program because it
was disappointed at the inefficiency of the government-appointed
teams distributing the aid to the poor.

The government expected to set aside Rp 20 trillion from the
1999/2000 state budget, up from Rp 17.79 trillion allocated for
the current fiscal year ending on March 31.

Some had charged that the aid disbursement had been very slow,
prone to collusion and lacking transparency.

Meanwhile, an expert staffer of the development planning
board, Mubyarto, acknowledged on Thursday several shortcomings in
the current social safety net program.

"The program is inadequate, because it was designed hastily to
cope with the crisis," Mubyarto told reporters after addressing a
seminar on a people-oriented economy.

The program was designed without considering the diversity of
the targeted recipients, he said.

"We cannot draw up a policy behind the desk of the central
office and expect to get the same results from all regions and
all segments of society out of this one policy," he said.

He also admitted that the government had made mistakes by
assigning different ministries to design their own social safety
net programs, such as the public works ministry, health ministry,
and the manpower ministry.

"That was the beginning of our mistakes. When the program is
divided among ministries, the mission is no longer to help the
needy," he said.

Too much government intervention had also given outlets to
collusion by local administration officials and those involved in
the aid distribution process, he said.

"The program is considered a project and people were supposed
to accept anything the project leaders do, when the people were
the ones with more rights over the aid," he said.

Mubyarto said the government was working to improve the
program by loosening control over the aid distribution.

"We will perfect the program so that the money will reach its
targets," he said.

Bapennas would design a new integrated concept based on the
inputs of related ministries and non-governmental organizations,
both of which would help carry out and monitor the program's
implementation, he said.

In the revised program, the money and other forms of
assistance would be channeled straight to local groups, which
would then distribute it to their members, with less intervention
from government officials.

At a hearing with members of the House of Representatives,
State Minister of Food Affairs and Horticulture A.M Saefuddin
also admitted that some of the aid had been siphoned off by local
government officials and village bodies appointed to distribute
it.

"There is some deviation in the implementation of the social
safety net program," he told the House's commission III dealing
with food affairs.

In Cirebon, West Java, for example, some of the cheap rice, to
be sold at Rp 1,500 (17 US cents) in a special market operation
for the poor, was found to be sold in the market at Rp 2,500 per
kilogram, he said.

The rice was traded by government officials and members of the
government-sponsored Village Resilience Boards (LKMDs) which were
given the right to manage the aid, he said.

He said the ministry was also investigating allegations that
some local legislators in Cianjur, West Java, sold the rice to
rice traders at Rp 1,500 per kilogram to be sold again in the
Jakarta markets.

Saefuddin played down the figure of the leaked aid however:
"The deviation is maybe around 0.1 percent, the remaining 99
percent of the program actually runs well." (das/gis)