Indonesia wants Japan to explain IT aid pledge

Indonesia wants Japan to explain IT aid pledge

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia is seeking an explanation from the
Japanese government about its pledge to provide aid to developing
countries to narrow the information and technology (IT) gap.

Indonesian Telecommunications Society chairman Soekarno
Abdulrachman said on Thursday that although Japan promised to
provide US$15 billion for IT projects in developing countries
during the Group of Eight (G-8) summit in Okinawa last year, the
terms for securing the funding remained unknown.

"So far Japan is the only industrialized country to have
promised help, but we still do not know the terms and conditions
that have been set to receive this help," he said during a break
in a media conference here on the digital divide.

Soekarno said for Indonesia to surmount the digital divide
would require affordable telecommunications infrastructure such
as personal computers in rural areas. But he acknowledged funding
was a major obstacle to achieving this.

One of the agreements reached at the G-8 summit in July last
year was to narrow the IT gap between rich and poor countries by
fostering the spread of computer and telecommunications
technology.

The leaders of the eight industrialized countries issued an IT
charter that vowed to help developing countries reap the benefits
of the Internet. They also established a task force that will
report back with ideas on how to achieve this goal at this year's
G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy.

At the media conference on Thursday, Moch. Slamet Hidayat of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the upcoming meeting of the
G-15 developing countries in Jakarta on May 25 was crucial to the
future development of IT in these countries.

"At the summit, we hope there will be the political will at
the level of the heads of state to increase awareness of the
importance of the information and communications technology
revolution," he said.

Soekarno said he hoped that what was proposed at the G-8
meeting would be expanded on during the G-15 summit.

"We hope IT will not only be available to high-end customers,
but also those in isolated areas," he said.

The G-15 summit will coincide with the Indonesian
International Telecommunications, Media and Information
Technology conference, which will showcase the latest technology
available in Indonesia.

Hillman M. Sulaiman, the head of the IT department at the
Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the conference
also would exhibit the telecommunications and Internet kiosks
that have sprung up across Indonesia.

"We have 187,000 telephone kiosks and 2,000 Internet kiosks
across the country. We are hoping for a business collaboration to
further develop these kiosks and help narrow the digital divide
in Indonesia," he said. (tnt)