[Kabar-indonesia] Indonesia seeks to reassure investors on corruption, red tape

[Joyo at aol.com]

AFP
November 2, 2006

Indonesia seeks to reassure investors on corruption, red
tape

Indonesia has sought to reassure investors attending a key
infrastructure summit that the government is fighting hard
to end corruption and slash red tape in Southeast Asia's
largest economy.

Hundreds of foreign and domestic investors have been
attending the event at which 111 projects worth 19.1 billion
dollars are being offered in an urgent bid to rejuvenate the
nation's crumbling infrastructure.

Vice president Jusuf Kalla said regular media reports of
arrests of corrupt officials were evidence that the
government was serious about tackling entrenched graft.

"I don't know (if) your countries are (doing) something like
that. Maybe the corruption level in your country is low. We
are working hard (on) that," Kalla said.

Kalla told delegates that efforts to improve the huge
bureaucracy's efficiency were also forging ahead.

"I know that the bureaucracy is slowly moving. That's why we
have many reforms of the law to make the bureaucracy work
well," he said.

"We will deliver confidence to anybody who will be starting
business in Indonesia," he pledged.

Analysts had warned ahead of the summit that enthusiasm to
stump up funds by investors could be tempered by Indonesia's
ingrained culture of corruption and lack of efficiency.

While China and India have been enjoying huge attention from
investors, Indonesia -- the world's fourth most populous
nation -- has languished on their radar screen, partly due
to its poor infrastructure in the first place.

State enterprises minister Sugiharto said the president had
sent a clear message that all state officials must improve
their work ethic or face dismissal.

"In the coming three years, for those bureaucrats who cannot
follow the patterns handed down by the president to the
ministers and first echelon officials, we are going to carry
out leadership reforms at the lower levels," he told a press
conference.

He cited two recent presidential instructions aimed at
trimming down red tape on electricity projects as an
example.

Under these regulations, Sugiharto said, the process of
starting project tenders to signing a deal which used to
take more than 800 days to complete has been reduced to 12
months.

"No slippage can be tolerated, otherwise we will be
experiencing power shortages in 2009," the minister said.

Indonesia's is already experiencing alarming energy
shortfalls despite the archipelago's vast resources of oil,
natural gas and geothermal energy.

On Wednesday, Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
also moved to assure investors that Jakarta could provide a
stable environment for their funds.

He said the nation needed some 22 billion dollars per year
to devote to infrastructure over the next few years.

Dimitri Pantazaras, a participant from a Bahrain-based
private equity fund investor, said that one problem
Indonesia faced was a lack of "projects that are properly
prepared and equipped with sound feasibility studies."

"There are not enough feasibility studies for these
projects, but I'm sure the government is committed in making
these reforms happen," he said.

Indonesia held its first infrastructure summit early last
year, soliciting bids for 91 projects worth 22.5 billion
dollars. Only nine deals however have since been secured.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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