Too high a price to pay

I believe many sectors of business will be badly affected by the present monetary crisis. Let us take, for example, the travel bureaus in our country which are almost entirely dependent on outgoing Indonesian tourists and, to a lesser extent, on the incoming foreign tourists, who need guides or inland tours arranged by travel bureaus.

However, with the exchange rate at more than Rp 10,000 per U.S. dollar, many would-be tourists cannot possibly pay expensive tours and travel, a fact which has resulted in many travel agencies going bust!

For many years, I subscribed to Reader's Digest at the yearly subscription rate of Rp 47,400, but this was before the crisis. When the reminder to renew my subscription came, I was surprised to find I would have to pay Rp 275,400, or 5.7 times the old subscription price. I understand why there was a rise -- the agent in Jakarta has to transfer the subscription amount in U.S. dollars and the exchange rate of the rupiah against the U.S. dollar is still fluctuating -- and that it is a matter of course that the subscription rate has been raised accordingly. Anyhow, I regret that I have had to terminate my subscription.

I cannot help wondering that the agent of foreign magazines and other foreign reading materials will have a hard time to make ends meet, with the many employees the company has to keep business running.

If I refer to my experience during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the prices went up with inflation, there came a time of deflation when prices of commodities went down because the purchasing power of the people became weaker daily when unemployment was rampant. I vividly remember that at that time I could buy a meal of nasi pecel, rice and vegetables in a peanut sauce, for just 0.5 cent of a guilder.

A. DJUANA

Jakarta