A policy to guide the government in taking over military businesses will be completed by September, according to the national team responsible for the report.

Team chairman Erry Ryana Hardjapamekas said his group had received strong support in tackling its tasks.

"I am confident we can complete the job in four months because we are receiving support from Indonesian Military (TNI) leaders and the Defense Ministry as well as from the Finance Ministry," he said after a discussion on military businesses here Tuesday.

Erry said the Finance Ministry had agreed to increase the defense budget once the government took over the military enterprises.

The TNI currently manages 1,520 business units, 1,071 cooperatives and 25 foundations across the country.

Experts said many of the businesses had collapsed after years of mismanagement.

Erry said his team would recruit dozens of university students to help speed up the mapping of military businesses.

"We plan to involve about 70 students from the National Administration Institute. We will also invite international auditors to verify our findings," he said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono set up the team to transfer military businesses in April, four years after the House of Representatives passed the military law.

The 2004 law requires the Indonesian military to withdraw from business by 2009.

The team is tasked with identifying military businesses, formulating policies to transfer them to the state and issuing recommendations for the President.

The President will then set up another team to implement the transfer the military enterprises.

Erry said his team would verify data on legal businesses only.

"We will not touch illegal businesses run by a group or personnel from the military," he said.

The military has long complained about the low defense budget and poor conditions for soldiers.

Experts have said the military's role in business could create conflicts of interest and undermine the professionalism of soldiers, whose main task is to protect the country.

They have called on the government to ban all military businesses and to increase the defense budget and improve soldiers' conditions.

Jaleswari Pramodawardani of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) said military businesses contributed less than 1.3 percent of the TNI budget.

She said Indonesia needed to emulate moves by China, which took serious steps to get its soldiers out of business by improving their conditions and increasing the defense budget.

"Since the new management system, China has become the country with the second largest defense budget after the United States," she said.

Speaking at a two-day symposium on defense affairs here Wednesday, Centre for Strategic and International Studies senior researcher Kusnanto Anggoro said the Defense Ministry has been implementing "slow-paced reform".

To speed up the process, he said, the ministry and the TNI should restructure their systems to pave the way for progressive development and to reduce the number of personnel for efficiency.

"First, the ministry should start employing civilians rather than military-based personnel. Most civilians offer progressive and creative solutions," he said.

"Furthermore, the ministry and the TNI should reduce their personnel to achieve budget efficiency. The budget can later be used for performance improvement."

Kusnanto said about 90,000 of the Army's 150,000 personnel were idle and of no use.

"If the reforms are accelerated, I think we could have an ideal military in the next 30 years," he said. (nkn)

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