http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/09/05/editorial-the-eastern-laggard.html Editorial: The eastern laggard The Jakarta Post | Mon, 09/05/2011 8:00 AM Ten years after the launching of new laws on regional autonomy no significant improvements have been made in the capacity of the bureaucratic and physical infrastructure in Indonesia’s eastern region to accelerate its economic development so it can gradually catch up with the western region — Java and Sumatra.
A macroeconomic analysis presented at a seminar in Denpasar recently by Jeffrey Kairupan, the chief of Bank Indonesia’s regional office in Denpasar, which covers Bali and the two provinces in Nusa Tenggara, showed how Indonesia’s eastern region has remained the laggard in the national economic development process. The economy of eastern Indonesia — Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Nusa Tenggara, Maluku and Papua — grew only 5.34 percent in the first half of this year, much less than the 6.5 percent experienced by the nation on the whole. Yet more discouraging is that this region’s economy remains dominated by the primary sector (agriculture and mining) accounting for a 40 percent share, while the manufacturing ( secondary) sector, which is supposed to add value and generate jobs, contributed only 14.8 percent, way below the national average of 32.61 percent. It is thus not surprising that while the eastern region accounts for almost two-thirds of Indonesia’s territory, it contributed only 19 percent to the gross domestic product, way below the 23 percent from Sumatra and 58 percent from Java. The main problem was an acute lack of infrastructure and the inadequate institutional capacity of local administrations. These barriers not only discourage investment from overseas and the other parts of the country, but also hinder the economic linkages (connectivity) between regencies within the eastern region and between that region and the rest of the country. The islands in that region cannot supplement each other’s local resources (comparative advantages), as can be seen in the wide disparities in prices of goods and commodities. It is quite unfortunate, therefore, that the other islands east of Bali (the country’s main destination for domestic and foreign tourists with up to 4 million arrivals a year) are not able to tap into the multiplier impact of the booming tourism industry in the resort island. Tourist hotels in Bali still depend mainly on imports of fish, meat and other basic goods for tourists. Whatever investment projects the central goverment is now preparing for the eastern region under its Master Plan for the acceleration and expansion of the national economic development until 2025, basic infrastructure should be the key. Without adequate infrastructure, the various islands in the region will never undergo the process of economic integration with themselves and the rest of the country. The government should develop at least four major seaports in eastern Indonesia into efficient and well-equipped hubs for inter-island and international trade in efforts to stimulate private investment in sea transport services. We don’t believe we will be able to lift our national economic growth to between 8 and 9 percenta a year, the target set in the 15-year Master Plan, without a much bigger contribution from the resoure-rich eastern region. Persistent massive gaps in infrastructure, which hinders economic-connectivitity between the western and eastern regions, could render the Master Plan targets as daydreams. We need strong leadership to push through public-private partnership projects in infrastructure to jump-start the development of several growth centers in the country’s eastern region. Follow our twitter @jakpost & our public Post Comments | Comments (1) access_access, cirebon | Tue, 06/09/2011 - 00:09am seems to me that JP is fully unaware that this eastern-slow-growth problem has become a classic one for it’s been already rearing its ugly head long before the reformation era for this insignificant eastern progress has been done by the then-ruling regime purposefully and it’s not something that has only lasted for the last ten years or so. the financial hub has always been the islands of java and Sumatra at large as the main drive force to boost the economic growth for the so-called entire nation as big and wide as Indonesia for most of its population live in the island of java and Sumatra. therefore, both of the islands account for 81% of the GDP. iramasuka, which stands for irian jaya (now papua), maluku, sulawesi and kalimantan, has always been considered as the step sons and daughters of the then-ruling regime and i don’t think i know exactly why, but perhaps due to their very long distance from the central governance for it’s a lot cheaper to cross to sumatra by sea but it sure is a lot more expensive should we want to cross to kalimantan by sea to boot. nevertheless, palangkaraya has once been mooted by the progenitor of pancasila as the new capital city of Indonesia, although it never materializes until the present day and until the 41st year of the death of the progenitor of pancasila himself. i guess i have to say that i’m very much at loggerheads with the author of this blog, who says the main culprit for the eastern slow growth is the local administrations. they, like the house of representatives, have remained dormant for more than three decades during the dark ages of the new order and the so-called regional autonomy has just been in existence for a decade or so following the reformation as the byproduct of the mighty monetary crisis. therefore, it’s far from being fair if the local administrations should be held accountable for the eastern slow growth. can you ever imagine that the territories as big and wide as the eastern side should be run by the local administrations, which have been literally told what to do by the central government from Jakarta like a master to his submissive slaves for all those years? the main culprit of the eastern slow growth is the reluctance of the central government itself to really be shorn of its real power it used to have during the dark ages. until this present day, any governor’s nominations should have the approval from jakarta, which clearly suggests that the west side of Indonesia wants its dominance still. and besides, we’ve been squandering a lot of precious time doing literally nothing all these times, we used to so focus our attention on any trivial status like whether we’re a nation of maritime, of industry or that of an agriculture and now we end up being far to just get one of the status. there are no trains in the eastern side of indonesia, which serve passengers regularly like the ones we have here in the west side and we never really can accomplish that trans-irian (now papua) road, which japan has long vowed that they could finish the mammoth task in less than three years. to actually talk about the eastern slow growth is really a thing in the future for i’ve spent three years of my life up there in duri, riau, which is located in sumatra/west side still and during my three-year stay up there, i’ve suffered hundreds of times already just to know that even in the capital city of pekan baru, they’ve run out of gas in the most gas stations available up there hundreds of times and we’re all aware that up there in riau, there is a one big giant american oil company – caltex pacific indonesia (now: chevron pacific indonesia), which has been granted a concession to literally explore oil and gas there as long as they want. you can literally see the joints of pipes which run thousands of miles across the province of riau and yet, i’ve been given the privilege to witness that the infrastructure up there literally couldn’t hold a candle to its reputation as the province of oil and gas to boot. and besides, i’ve already lost counts of how many times we should live under the darkness during the hot night up there in duri without the electricity for the one of plants ran out of gas or one of their generators broke down; therefore, we had to spend extra rupiah to buy diesel fuel to generate our quite-big generators; so that, we could live like a modern civilization still. other than problems with electricity and fuel, we also had to suffer from another importance – water. besides that, i’ve spent two years of my life up there in balikpapan, east kalimantan in east slow side of indonesia and although i’ve never encountered a problem with the lack of fuel, but i had problems with the scarcity of water and electricity. balikpapan is the most prestige local region of kalimantan for there are simply many multi-national oil and gas companies, which have their branches open there and yet i had to witness the same old story, which both islands in both west and east sides of Indonesia suffer – the electricity, the scarcity of water and fuel. therefore, from those two examples, which i’ve come to experience firsthand, we know that the real problem is NOT really whether it’s really a matter of the highly-productive west or the eastern slow growth of Indonesia for it’s really not. the real problem is in the central government’s own hands for it never really trains those local administration in order to really comprehend what an administration really means. consequently and unfortunately, mayors of the most provinces in indonesia (if we don’t want to recognize it to happen in all provinces) see the local autonomy more as their new vehicle to enrich themselves and their families rather than a new vehicle to build a stronger indonesia. and to cap it all, nepotism is one unlucky factor that we have to reckon to boot for the governor of the west sumatra has once said that 80% of civil servants who literally work for the governor’s office literally DO NOT know how to work for they’ve all successfully become civil servants simply because most of them have relatives who’ve long worked there. perhaps it’s true that this country is too big and hard to handle (i instantly remember an old song by black crow “hard to handle”) for the central government and that’s the very reason why some of our fellow brothers and sisters who literally live on the indonesia – malaysia border want to be more than willing to wave a malaysian flag if the central government keeps turning a blind eye to their basic needs and who live in papua want to have a referendum to decide their own destiny for the future simply because the central government never really pays attention to them, despite trillion of rupiahs, which have been literally bankrolled by the central government to the papua local administration. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
