'Use Davos to boost confidence in RI'

Harry Bhaskara, Davos

What is Indonesia trying to achieve with its participation in Davos? To boost confidence in Indonesia, according to Coordinating Minister for the Economy Aburizal Bakrie.

Despite the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Aceh, the Indonesian government is holding its course and will continue with its development plan, Bakrie told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.

"We are not losing control; we are in control and we will continue with our initial development plans. It's only that the reconstruction of Aceh has been added into (these plans)," he said.

Minister of Trade Mari E. Pangestu, also in Davos, said that extreme poverty in some countries, notably sub-Saharan Africa, was receiving major attention.

"One of the key questions posed in the meeting was, what is the corporate world able to do to overcome poverty," she said.

The United Nations's millennium development goals have set a target of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015 as compared with 1990.

Unfortunately, Mari said, the national poverty reduction program in Indonesia had not been linked to the UN millennium goals.

The Indonesian program, designed by the National Development Planning Agency and the Ministry of People's Welfare, should have involved more people including those from civil society, representatives of regional governments, and the private sector, she said.

Bakrie claimed that the Indonesian government had solid evidence of its commitment to development with its convening of the Infrastructure Summit last month that offered 91 projects valued at US$ 22.5 billion.

"The tsunami has not stopped us developing our country," he said. "We are telling Davos delegates that Indonesia is continuing its democratization and its socio-political reform."

But, he added, Indonesia also needs to explain that reform often carries with it some pain.

"Any change will bring about short-term pain," Bakrie said.

In the long term, the programs will be to the benefit of the nation, but may not produce results in the short term.

Indonesia is more upbeat, he said, especially as the new president has a strong mandate as a consequence of being directly elected.

"The election was one of the biggest in the world and it was held peacefully in a country of more than 200 million people. We should be proud of this," he said.

These are the main messages Indonesia wished to convey at Davos, Bakrie said.

Debate on poverty in Indonesia, Mari said, had become polarized. One pole bases its arguments on the absolute number of poor people in the country, while the other pole looks at poverty on a regional basis.

Asked which pole she favored, Mari said she was leaning more to the regional approach.

After a base has been founded, she said, the next step will be to determine the cause of poverty.

"The causes of poverty in Papua are different from those in Java."

Following this, we can then decide on funding, she said.

"It should be made clear how much the government will be able to offer financially. Then an action plan should be drawn up after it is clear how much funds would come in from various sectors such as NGOs, the private sector and foreign donors," she said.

Both Bakrie and Mari considered the Davos meeting an important gathering of the world's business and government leaders.

"It is an annual meeting where a government is able to present its vision both in terms of the economy and of politics," Bakrie said.

The Davos meeting has been convened for more than 30 years. This year, the small highland village about a two-hour drive from Zurich drew some 2,250 participants comprising not only business and government leaders, but also activists from developed and developing countries.

The author is a staff writer for The Jakarta Post.