P

resident Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo should closely monitor the One-Stop Integrated Services (PTSP) launched on Tuesday by the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM); otherwise, this facility could turn into what many businesspeople have cynically called the '€œone-stop dead'€ service center.

When it comes to licensing authority, coordination between ministries has been challenging in the country because the various institutions and agencies always fight '€” sometimes overzealously '€” to defend their respective turf without regard for the bigger national goal.

We should also magnanimously acknowledge that within the government bureaucracy, notorious for being one of the most corrupt in the world, licensing authority often serves as a gold mine for rent.

Even under the authoritarian rule of then president Soeharto, the government was never able to turn the BKPM into a one-roof licensing center for investments. To put it bluntly, the agency has never properly exercised its '€œcoordinating'€ function, as its name denotes.

Businesspeople had to wander from one ministry or agency to another to process hundreds of permits. An equally frustrating, time-consuming process took place at the regional level, where investors or businesspeople needed to obtain dozens of local permits.

Jokowi, himself formerly a furniture producer and exporter, fully understands the frustration experienced by businesspeople in obtaining all the necessary permits to start a business. Expediting investment licensing thus became one of his top-priority reforms, as promised in his campaign last year.

The President generated optimism when he chose to make the BKPM the site of his first visit after installing his Cabinet in October. He found it mind-boggling, for example, that building a power plant, which the country badly needs in order to avert an electricity crisis, required 52 kinds of permits and almost three years to process.

The one-stop services he launched on Tuesday took over the processing of 134 permits from 22 ministries and agencies, including permits related to food and drug administration, land titles and product standardization.

The realization of the one-stop investment service center (which excludes investment in oil and gas mining and financial services) was only made possible due to the strong executive leadership shown by President Jokowi, who instructed the related ministries and agencies to assign their respective licensing executives to the BKPM.

But Jokowi should keep a close eye on this new facility, at least during its first year, or until the new system is running smoothly, because it could return to '€œbusiness as usual'€ mode.

Certainly, his next priority should be gradually expanding this facility to regional administrations by helping improve their institutional capacity to serve businesspeople.

This system could be made more sustainable if governors, regents and mayors could be made to realize the paramount importance of investment to create jobs, which in turn generates wages and purchasing power to buy the goods and services that turn the wheels of the local economy.