Poor welfare blamed on small budget

Debbie A. Lubis, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The small budgetary allocation for health, education and social welfare expenditure was a major factor that rendered Indonesia one of the countries least successful in improving the welfare of its people, population experts said on Thursday.

Chairman of the Indonesian Legislative Forum on Population and Development Surya Chandra Surapaty said social spending had yet to enter the mainstream in the budget at either national or provincial level.

"Meanwhile, the education sector should receive 20 percent of the development budget and the health sector some 15 percent. At present we receive only 5 percent for each," he told The Jakarta Post.

In the 2002 Human Development Report released by the UN Development Program (UNDP) on Wednesday, Indonesia ranked 110th out of 173 countries when assessed on its Human Development Index (HDI), which measures each country's achievement in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income.

The report puts Indonesia at seventh of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), just above Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.

The country's rank is the same as it achieved in 1995.

Separately, Ascobat Gani, an advocate on family planning and human development, said Indonesia's HDI ranking had nothing to do with the "more democratic" label attached to the nation in the UNDP report.

"Logically the more democratic a country the more prosperous it is. But the question remains. Is Indonesia really democratic?" he asked the Post.

Ascobat, who also heads the Study Center of Health and Economy at the University of Indonesia, said each government institution should spend more of its budget on the social sector instead of buying cars for its officials, building new offices, or on overseas travel.

Ascobat cited that the province of Papua had shown good political will by allocating 30 percent of its annual budget to the education sector and 15 percent to health.

He emphasized that the increase in the budget for social spending would help the country boost the people's welfare.

"With enough expenditure we can hope for a significant decline in the maternal mortality rate, which currently stands at 360 deaths per 100,000 live births," Ascobat said.

He expressed hope that the increase could also eliminate the number of dropout students. There are 1.7 million school dropouts each year in the country, some 53 percent of whom end up as job seekers.