T

he key messages of three international reports on Indonesia'€™s economic outlook issued over the last seven days are essentially the same: continue the broad-based reform or suffer from low economic growth.

The World Bank'€™s latest quarterly report on the Indonesian economy, issued last week, the Asian Development Bank'€™s (ADB) annual flagship report on Asia'€™s economic outlook for 2015, released on Tuesday, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Economic Survey on Indonesia 2015, launched on Wednesday, agree that Indonesia should be able to achieve economic growth slightly higher than last year'€™s 5 percent.

But this optimistic estimate assumes that the pace of civil service and regulatory reform will be accelerated, given the downside risks from external factors such as the persistent economic slump in Europe, declining growth in China and the strong recovery in the US, which necessitates a tighter money policy, thereby making it more attractive to investors and inducing capital flight from emerging economies like Indonesia.

The ADB specifically suggests that the reform momentum be maintained and concerted efforts to develop infrastructure, reduce logistics costs, enhance budget execution and improve the overall investment climate be stepped up.

The OECD has warned that the pace of reform has slowed and politically popular, yet worrisome, protectionist policies, which increased in 2013 and 2014, could continue as President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo, is vulnerable to political bullying by vested-interest politicians of the majority faction.

True, broad-based economic reforms are never easy because they take away rents built up in the economic system and therefore set off opposition from those whose rents are at risk. Moreover, reform requires a broad-based popular sentiment that things have to be changed and needs a leadership that is able to translate that massive dissatisfaction into concrete programs.

Yet public trust in the Jokowi government'€™s true commitment to fighting corruption is weakening after his poor handling of the dispute between the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and the National Police. President Jokowi could face both a negative public-opinion climate and an adversarial House of Representatives. Such an environment would make it even more difficult for Jokowi to speed up the pace of reform, which sometimes requires the sharing of economic hardship with the common people.

The three international organizations also share the view that the government should pay more attention to stimulating the manufacturing sector because the commodity boom, which ended last year, will not return soon. Export-oriented manufacturing, besides creating more jobs than extractive industries such as mining, is more stable than the highly volatile commodity sector.

The biggest challenge, though, is that the manufacturing sector requires an efficient logistics system, which in turn needs good infrastructure to make the country well connected to global supply chains. Improving the country'€™s crumbling infrastructure, however, needs huge investment.