Mega seen as moving too slowly in resolving economic woes
Dadan Wijaksana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Although 100 days may be too short to evaluate the performance of President Megawati Soekarnoputri in tackling the country's deep economic problems, some say that her economic team has been moving too slowly.
"Generally speaking, it has been "slow motion" progress by the government. However, I must say that they're still on the right track," said Hadi Soesastro from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), adding that the government had yet to make a serious mistake so far.
Economist Didiek J. Rachbini said that a lack of daring action was mostly to blame for the country's slow progress in achieving economic recovery.
He said that the high expectations the public had when the economic team was first set up had been brought back down to earth because of the government's inability to boldly explore new ways of easing the burdens that people had to bear as a result of the economic crisis.
"In foreign debt settlement, for instance, we keep burdening the public by paying the debt with their tax payments," Didiek said, pointing out that other countries had managed to obtain debt relief facilities.
"The reality that the public has to deal with at the moment is far from their expectations," he said.
Megawati assumed power late in July after Abdurrahman Wahid was dismissed by the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) due to incompetence.
She was praised both at home and overseas by, among others, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank when she formed a credible economic team, boosting the value of the rupiah against the U.S. dollar to 8,500, compared to around 11,000 during Abdurrahman's presidency.
Coordinating Minister for the Economy Dorodjatun Kuntjoro Jakti said at the time that the priority of the economic team would be to create employment and improve the country's sovereign credit rating to allow local firms to seek overseas funds at lower cost.
But the world economic recession, deepened by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., has created new difficulties for Megawati in lifting the country out of its economic crisis and creating more jobs.
Growing anti-U.S. sentiment at home and difficulties with the new regional autonomy policy are also creating new jitters among foreign investors.
The rupiah is currently hovering at around 10,200 compared to the state budget assumption of Rp 9,600, while Bank Indonesia's benchmark interest rate (SBI) has jumped to 17.58 percent. Year- on-year inflation has been in worrying double-digit territory over the past couple of months.
The government's 3.5 percent economic growth target this year is also unlikely to be achieved amid the global slump, while slow progress in the key privatization program is placing a huge question mark over the current state budget.
Economist Umar Juoro said that the economic team lacked cohesion in determining priorities for getting the country out of the crisis.
"The government's performance has been disappointing. They have failed to create solid synergies," Umar said.
"A failure to determine priorities is the cause of that."
He also stressed that what the government had been doing so far was merely securing its own agenda without giving much thought to the urgent need of providing the public with pro- growth policies.
"They have been kept busy with the attempts to secure agreements with the IMF, draw up a budget, etc.
"Meanwhile, they have offered little stimulus in the way of fiscal and monetary policies to help revive the public's appetite for doing business," Umar added.
He asserted that low inflation, increased lending from banks and employment opportunities were what people really needed at the present time.