Hartarto asked to take action on Bali Declaration

JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto has assigned Coordinating Minister for Industry and Trade Hartarto and other ministers to formulate guidelines to assist large companies in their declaration to help accelerate the development of small businesses.

Minister of Cooperatives and Small Enterprises Subiakto Tjakrawerdaya said after meeting with Soeharto at the state Bina Graha building that the guidelines should be ready before the end of the year.

Some 100 business tycoons, after a course on the state ideology Panca Sila at Jimbaran, Bali, on Aug. 27, vowed to narrow the economic gap separating them and their smaller counterparts. Their vow is being called the Bali Declaration.

Eka Tjipta Widjaja, a tycoon in the businesses of plantations, manufacturing and banking that was present in Bali, has suggested that big companies allocate two percent of their net profits for small business assistance.

In a further development, a small group of tycoons, led by Sofyan Wanandi, formed a task force to formulate the Bali Declaration's action plan.

Subiakto said yesterday that Soeharto has ordered Hartarto to articulate the guidelines and to discuss them with the tycoons. "The concept, when agreed, will be disclosed to the public," said Subiakto.

Similar issues of income distribution and asset ownership were discussed by President Soeharto with 32 businessmen, most of whom were ethnic Chinese, at his Tapos cattle ranch in West Java in March 1990.

Criticism

However, some critics contend that the Bali Declaration will suffer the same fate as the Tapos discussion, the results of which have not been implemented completely.

The central executive board of the Indonesian Democratic Party said in a statement yesterday that the Bali Declaration did not cover the main problems faced by Indonesian entrepreneurs.

"The social and economic gaps and injustices are mostly the result of corruption and collusion between businessmen and bureaucrats," a deputy chairman of the party, Kwik Kian Gie, said in the statement.

The statement added that the main problem is not with the increasing number of large-scale businesses in the country but with the way they're run.

Kwik also suggested that the Bali Declaration be realized under the coordination of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, not by a tycoon task force.

Subiakto denied accusations that the Tapos discussion was a failure, saying that 185 big companies have since sold to cooperatives 80.9 million shares, which are paid for with dividends obtained from share ownership. (kod)