Govt must invest more on education to rekindle economic miracle
Govt must invest more on education to rekindle economic miracle
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta
The Indonesian government must invest more money on education and
health care to help regain the high economic growth of the past,
the United Nations say.
Indonesia spends less than any other East Asian country on
education and health care as a percentage of gross national
product and about one third of its children were badly
malnourished, said the Indonesian Human Development Report 2001.
The report was jointly prepared by the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP), the National Development Planning
Agency, and the Central Bureau of Statistics.
The report released last Friday said that greater spending on
human development was necessary to boost economic productivity to
create social stability.
"Rekindling Indonesia's economic miracle will mean operating
on two fronts simultaneously. On the one hand seeking to raise
the country to higher levels of productivity. On the other hand
achieving the political and social stability in which productive
enterprises can develop and grow."
The report said that without a highly skilled workforce,
Indonesia would face difficulties in competing in a global
economy.
It added that the lack of government attention in boosting the
quality of the workforce had caused the country to be unable to
fully benefit from the surge in exports due to the weak links
between large-scale exporting companies and local small and
medium-sized enterprises that might have fed the former with
components or intermediate goods.
It pointed out that for electronics and pharmaceuticals,
imports accounted for 90 percent of export value.
Other export products with high imported components included
footwear (53%), garments (49%), and textiles (34%).
"As a result, Indonesia has consistently imported more
manufactured goods than it has exported," the report said.
"Stepping up to higher levels of technology will require a
much greater investment in education," it said, adding that
Indonesia was investing only around 1.4 percent of gross national
product (GNP) on education, compared with a global average of 4.8
percent.
The report also said that boosting health care should be a top
priority.
"Currently, around 30 percent of Indonesian children are
moderately or severely malnourished," it said.
"Without this kind of attention, the physical and intellectual
development of Indonesia's children is being compromised from the
outset."
Indonesia was considered as one of the miracle economies of
the Asia Pacific region in the mid-1990s with average economic
growth of around 7 percent. But the 1997 economic crisis had
caused the economy to contract by more than 13 percent in 1998,
and forced the government to allocate a large part of its state
budget to finance bank restructuring programs and pay foreign
debt.
But UNDP said that despite being deep in debt, and burdened
with the heavy cost of economic restructuring at a time of
political uncertainties and unfavorable external economic
development, greater spending on human development was a must.
"Human development cannot be considered independently of
economic development -- the two have to go hand in hand," the
report said.
"The key, however, is to recognize how all these issues
connect, the social, the economic, the political and bring this
recognition to the forefront of public consciousness."
For fact box:
Public expenditure on health, education
Public expenditure
___________________
Per capita Education Health
Income, 1998 %GNP 1995-97 %GDP 1996-98
__________________________________________________________________
Average
East Asia 3,564 2.9 1.7
China 3,130 2.3 0.7
Indonesia 3,490 1.4 0.6
SKorea 13,590 3.7 2.5
Malaysia 8,140 4.9 1.3
Philippines 3,520 3.4 1.7
Singapore 28,460 3 1.1
Thailand 6,690 4.8 1.7
World average 6,526 4.8 2.5
__________________________________________________________________
Source: UNDP/World Bank