Indonesia will have to work hard to create conditions conducive for foreign and local investment and it may have to invest in civil infrastructure in key sectors. Investment will follow only when a stable conducive environment prevails.
According to the latest census, Indonesia has a population of 238 million, which is a big attraction for foreign investors in terms of a huge potential market.
Cash incentives cannot make a person self-reliant and it is vey difficult to monitor it in a young democracy. There is a saying that goes something like, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. The message is that it is good to be involved in charity but it cannot eradicate poverty on its own.
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have donated billions of dollars to charity.
However, Warren Buffet has not given it to just any charity, but to the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation that functions in the tertiary sector. Highly qualified people prepare development programs, which are completed within the timeframe with full financial accountability.
Earlier, countries consolidated agriculture, as the primary sector, and then moved to healthcare and secondary sectors. But today it is possible to avoid passing through step-by-step process of development; all the stages can be done simultaneously. Of course, food, healthcare and education are prerequisites for economic progress.
Therefore, the government should always keep focused on these elements of social infrastructure.
Indonesia, like any other new democracy, has all the challenges faced by any developing nation.
However, it also has the advantage of being able to assess various development models for their suitability to Indonesian conditions, and plan accordingly.
Indonesia is very rich in mineral, marine, forestry and energy resources. It has a biodiversity that is unique in the world and, most important of all, it has abundant, highly creative and cheap human resources. It needs to plan a time-bound development process so that any change in the government does not obstruct economic progress. It must establish manufacturing units to add value to the products across the archipelago and reduce export of precious minerals.
The secondary sector creates maximum job opportunities. The need is to develop the secondary sector, based on appropriate technology and according to the needs and aspirations of the people of various islands, in order to encourage sustainable development that promotes the three “Rs”, i.e., renew, recycle or replace.
With the growth of the secondary sector, the tertiary sector is bound to develop. Indonesia is a blessed country, its tourism potential is unlimited, anther sector which can contribute substantially to the GDP.
It should be borne in mind that you cannot make the poor rich by making the rich poor. So whether poor will always be with us depends on us, doesn’t it?
Mira Bahukhandi
Jakarta
