T

he city of Blitar in East Java came out on top in a survey of local economic governance released Tuesday by the Regional Autonomy Implementation Monitoring Committee (KPPOD).

Nine parameters were used in the survey: infrastructure, private enterprises development program, access to land, interaction between local administrations and businesses, business licensing, local taxes and fees, security and business conflict resolution, capacity and integrity of regional heads, and quality of local regulations.

“Blitar was considered particularly good in infrastructure, interaction between local administrations and businesses, licensing, and regional head capacity and integrity,” KPPOD executive director P. Agung Pambudhi told The Jakarta Post during a media briefing of the survey results at Hotel Borobudur in Jakarta.

The survey ranked 245 cities and regencies in 19 provinces across Indonesia and was conducted between August 2010 and January 2011. It analyzed local regulations and conducted a business survey on respondents from 12,391 companies.

Eleven of the top 20 cities and regencies were located in East Java, including Blitar. The provincial capital, Surabaya, however, was ranked 110th, while President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s hometown of Pacitan was ranked 160th.

Regions in the eastern provinces of Papua and Maluku dominated the bottom 20. Waropen regency in Papua was considered by respondents to have the poorest quality of local economic governance.

Four other Papuan regencies — Mappi, Sarmi, Asmat, and Keerom — as well as seven regencies in Maluku, were also in the bottom 20. Sorong regency in West Papua, however, managed to crack the top ten and was ranked fifth.

Jakarta was not included in the survey as its autonomy resided at the provincial level.

“Many of the surveyed companies cited poor infrastructure management by local administrations as the biggest problem they faced daily,” Agung said, adding that roads, street lighting and clean water were cited by many respondents as the three major problems.

Access to land was also considered problematic, more so in urban than rural areas. One in three business people acknowledged difficulties in obtaining land. One in four acknowledged difficulties in obtaining land use permits.

Processing time was relatively longer in western Indonesia (Java and Sumatra), where the highest average period was 16 weeks in Bangka Belitung, than it was in eastern Indonesia, where the shortest period of just four weeks was found in Central Sulawesi and South Kalimantan, the survey said.

More than 70 percent of respondents considered licensing services to be efficient, as well as free from corruption and illegal fees. “Many may not agree with this particular finding on licensing, but this is what we found in the field,” Agung said.

However, respondents complained of “problematic” local regulations. A study related to the survey showed that 1,066 local-level business regulations did not conform with national-level regulations.

Coordinating Economic Minister Hatta Rajasa said these findings were important to improve regional autonomy and to achieve good governance in local administrations. (mim)