New government told to use IT to help economy boom
Tony Hotland, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The new government must pay more attention to the information technology (IT) sector given its great potential in accelerating economic growth, the Indonesian Information and Communications Society (Mastel) has said.
Mastel vice chairman Richard Kartawijaya told The Jakarta Post on Monday that the current government continued to pay far too little attention to the sector, despite its obvious importance.
"For example, many IT projects were proposed, such as the provision of computers. But the government doesn't seriously monitor how the projects are being conducted despite the fact that many of those projects were financed with foreign loans," said Richard.
He said that a thriving IT sector was essential for the nation to achieve high economic growth, as it could facilitate faster and more convenient economic activities.
"The IT and also telecommunications sector may not be the main driver, but we're also helpless without it. The main driver in our country is, for example, agriculture. With the help of IT, agriculture can grow faster," he said.
Therefore, the new government should consider integrating the Directorate General of Post and Telecommunications into the Office of State Minister of Communication and Information to ease coordination and policy making, he said.
The directorate general is currently under the auspices of the Ministry of Communications, which mostly deals with transportation issues.
"Both IT and telecommunications are actually one integrated issue. Splitting it into two different departments are only going to make coordination and implementation of policies more difficult," Richard asserted.
This way, policies and regulations on the information and telecommunications sector would not overlap and reports on progress of projects in both sectors could be centralized, he said.
Regarding the country's low penetration rate of fixed-line telephones, Richard said that in the future, local administrations should be more aggressive in proposing to the central government and telephone operators to speed up installation in their areas.
"Local officials are actually the ones who really know the need and demand in their areas ... they should be able to identify it," he said.
At present, only around 8.5 million people out of 220 million (or 3.9 percent) have access to fixed-line telephones, mostly in urban areas. Telephone operators have been reluctant to build fixed-line telephones in rural areas due to the low return on investment.
The government is trying to install fixed lines in the rural areas under the Universal Service Obligations (USO) scheme, which aims to provide each of the country's villages with at least one phone line.
Cellular and fixed-wireless telephone systems, however, have been experiencing robust growth over the past few years, with subscription currently standing at about 23 million or 10.4 percent of the population.
The Association of Cellular Operators has predicted the number of cellular subscribers would rise to 28 million next year and 65 million by 2007.
Several experts, including the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Body, have suggested the government review the duopoly in the telecommunications sector as the system was not successful in boosting the penetration rate, and instead it should encourage new players to enter the market.
Under the current system, only PT Telkom and PT Indosat have the rights to provide fixed-line local, long-distance, international phone services.