Welcome investors

This week, Jakarta will be busy hosting a meeting between Indonesian and Malaysian businessmen. Seventy businessmen will not only visit the country but also look into business opportunities that could be explored together.

Vice President Hamzah Haz expressed the hope last week that local businessmen would take advantage of such a meeting. This cooperation is useful for all parties involved and will ease the burden of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA).

Hopefully, this could be realized, as some important issues relating to the management of state assets have not yet been solved, namely what percentage of the assets local businessmen could control and how to invite foreign businessmen to invest here.

Economic growth in Malaysia has increased steadily after the government gave special attention to improving the economic conditions of indigenous Malaysians by giving them facilities.

Here, there is no such attention. The government, on the contrary, always says yes to foreign demands. South Korea and Thailand do not do that. They were able to revive their economy by strengthening their peoples' sense of nationalism.

Now, the best way to optimize all this, is through a synergy between all parties. Hopefully, the arrival of the Malaysian businessmen would serve as a momentum for such a synergy, and would be followed by other members of ASEAN. And in the future, we will build this region into a single economic entity just like the European Union.

-- Republika, Jakarta