VP wants RI to stop begging for foreign aid

The Jakarta Post Jakarta

Vice President Hamzah Haz said on Saturday Indonesia should not become a "beggar nation" that relies on foreign assistance to care for its people.

"We are not a people who like to beg for mercy from foreign people," he was quoted by Antara as speaking at an alumni gathering of the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) in the West Java capital of Bandung.

"Indonesia should be able to emerge as a self-sufficient country, one which can even extend loans to other countries," he added.

Hamzah said Indonesia, home to 210 million people making it the world's fourth largest country, should benefit from its huge population and wealth of natural resources.

"The country's abundant natural wealth and great number of people should actually be enough to cater for the people's needs," he said.

The Vice President blamed past governments for mismanagement and poor development policies, which he said had caused a deep gap between the rich and the poor and triggered social unrest across the country.

This plunged Indonesia into a multidimensional crisis, he said, adding that the condition was deteriorating amid the lack of social solidarity, especially on the part of big businessmen.

Apart from that, Hamzah said rampant practices of corruption, collusion and nepotism had further worsened the nation's hardship.

The government's foreign debt amounted to a total of US$74 billion due now.

Hamzah said Indonesia's interest payments on debt amounted to some US$9.7 billion per year. "Had this country been a company, we would have been declared bankrupt," he added.