Limited budget for poverty goals: Govt
Limited budget for poverty goals: Govt
A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government said on Tuesday a lack of funds would prevent it from halving the number of poor people in the country by 2015, as contained in the Millennium Development Goals.
"In the funding aspect, the government budget will remain limited. In 2004, for example, we will still face a 1 percent deficit in the gross domestic product," Syahrial Loetan, a senior official at the National Development Planning Body (Bappenas), said.
Syahrial was speaking at a seminar jointly held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
He said budget problems would impede the government's ability to fund activities and programs that could enable it to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
These development goals are humanitarian targets pledged by leaders worldwide in the late 1990s.
The eight goals include halving the number of poor people by 2015 and the number of people suffering from hunger, ensuring all boys and girls can complete primary school and reducing by two- thirds the mortality rate of children under the age of five.
Apart from budget woes there also are problems related to the messy implementation of regional autonomy and the security instability plaguing some regions, said Syahril.
"The implementation of regional autonomy, which has failed to live up to its original objectives, casts doubt over the ability to achieve the millennium goals," he said.
Citing an example, he said the distribution of social safety net funds often missed the target partly because of the inability of regional governments to implement the program properly.
Communal conflicts and separatist movements across the country are the other major obstacles to Indonesia's efforts to meet the millennium goals.
Bo Asplund, the UNDP resident representative for Indonesia, voiced similar concerns.
"While a few provinces in Indonesia are already well on track to reach the targets, many are not and will likely reach them way beyond 2015," Asplund said in his keynote speech.
He said a number of provinces were on course to reach the poverty reduction target by 2015, with Yogyakarta projected to reach the target in 2004, East Java, Jambi and East Kalimantan in 2006 and Central Sulawesi in 2008.
"However, the 17 others, or the majority, will not obtain it by 2015," said Asplund.
North Sumatra, Aceh and West Nusa Tenggara might even reach the target in the next century, Asplund said.
He said the UNDP and the Indonesian government were working out a road map to help the government attain the Millennium Development Goals on time.