RI-Indiana Alliance to help small businesses
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The United States Committee of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) and the Indonesia-Indiana Alliance signed a cooperation agreement in Washington on Thursday to develop small enterprises, notably in agribusiness, and to promote exports and tourism.
The five-year cooperation agreement will serve as an umbrella for businesspeople in Indonesia and their counterparts in the state of Indiana and in the U.S in general to establish joint ventures, partnerships and other forms of business alliances.
"This agreement is one of the results of President Megawati Soekarnoputri's visit to the U.S. in September," said the committee's chairman Tony Agus Ardie at the signing ceremony at the Indonesian embassy.
Tony and Daniel S. Emerson, president of the Indonesia-Indiana Alliance, signed the cooperation accord in the presence of Indiana's Governor Frank O'Bannon and Indonesia's charge d'affaires Samudro Sriwidjaja.
Both parties see the agreement as quite timely in view of the prolonged economic crisis in Indonesia and the pervasive mood of pessimism among the people who have been bearing the brunt since 1997, Tony said.
"This is some good news amid the daily flurry of bad news about Indonesia," Tony said in a statement sent to Jakarta.
He asserted that the cooperation would deliberately focus on the development of small businesses and the promotion of tourism and exports as they are now the most promising sectors for fueling a stronger economic recovery in Indonesia.
Concentrating on small business is a deliberate turnaround from the conglomerate-led growth strategy of development which ended in 1997 with the multi-dimensional crisis that the nation is still confronting, he said.
"The growth-centered paradigm of development with its trickle- down effect had miserably failed to sustain environment-friendly and equitable development," Tony pointed out.
The growth-led strategy had instead created a wide gap between big businesses and small enterprises and cooperatives and caused social tension that could easily result in political instability, he said.
What is now urgently needed, according to Tony, is a change in the mindset of senior government officials so that they can fully realize the crucial importance of small businesses as the backbone of the economy and a provider of jobs.
He said the crisis revealed how greedy conglomerates, who had enjoyed preferential treatment, had ruined the banking industry with their mountains of bad debts and almost driven the government to bankruptcy.
Tony added that Kadin and the Indonesia-Indiana Alliance would cooperate in selecting promising small businesses for further development either through technical or financial assistance.
"Technical assistance could be in the form of quality-control consultancies to help Indonesian companies fulfill American quality standards, notably those of the Food and Drug Administration."
In addition, he added, both parties would also cooperate in helping restore Indonesia as a favored destination for American tourists since the tourism industry was largely based on local resources and had multiplier effects for the rest of the economy.