Solution to our country's loans

Solution to our country's loans

From Warta Kota

Even the averagely informed Jakartan is quite aware of our country's huge foreign loans. This is clearly caused by the character and attitude of our leaders, especially those in power and major businesses, who, along with their cronies and nepotism network, prefer taking loans for their own needs rather than the people's. As their sole major "asset" is power, they take the corruption, collusion and nepotism route.

Taking a loan in itself is not wrong. But when such an act is worsened by mismanagement plus the exhaustion of our resources for payments, ultimately causing the people to bear the burden, then it is a barbaric act, because a large portion of the loan is corrupted anyway.

The question is what can an ordinary citizen contribute to get the country out of its financial entanglement?

I remember Kwik Kian Gie's statement in one of SCTV's talk shows. According to him there are only two options as a solution: either we start getting used to "wearing just shorts" or become "an obedient child" to the IMF (as otherwise the promised additional loans will never flow in).

To avoid the headaches caused by dependency on the IMF for obtaining loans or the leniency in repaying the previous loans, it is high time we started to train ourselves in simple living. All the better if we can somehow maximize "saving activities".

I hope that this simple suggestion can contribute toward the increasing of the country's foreign exchange reserves (now a laughing matter as most of it originates from loans).

ANGKAWIJAYA

Jakarta