RI-Indiana Alliance to help small businesses

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.