00074918.2014.938410

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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies

ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20

Beyond Political Skin: Convergent Paths to an

Independent National Economy in Indonesia and

Vietnam

Pham Van Thuy

To cite this article: Pham Van Thuy (2014) Beyond Political Skin: Convergent Paths to an Independent National Economy in Indonesia and Vietnam, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 50:2, 289-290, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2014.938410

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.938410

Published online: 30 Jul 2014.

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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Vol. 50, No. 2, 2014: 289–96

ISSN 0007-4918 print/ISSN 1472-7234 online/14/000289-8

ABSTRACTS OF DOCTORAL THESES

ON THE INDONESIAN ECONOMY

Beyond Political Skin: Convergent Paths to an Independent National Economy in Indonesia and Vietnam

Pham Van Thuy ([email protected]) Accepted 2014, Leiden University

This study discusses Indonesia’s and Vietnam’s transformations from colo-nial to national economies. It focuses on the intertwined processes of economic de colonisation and reconstruction in both countries after the Second World War, paying special attention to political and institutional factors. Indonesian leaders, for example, were mainly nationalists who were afiliated with various political parties. Many of them had served in the Dutch colonial public service and the Jap-anese administration, and therefore had extensive knowledge and experience in economic management. In contrast, the majority of members of the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) were revolutionary leaders adher-ing to Marxist ideology. Even if the Vietnamese nationalists obtained positions in the DRV government in the early months of independence, the were soon elimi-nated, only to re-emerge again in South Vietnam after the country’s partitioning under the Geneva Agreement in 1954.

The different political and professional backgrounds of the leaders of Indonesia and Vietnam had a great impact on economic decolonisation in the two coun-tries. Given the shortage of indigenous capital and trained personnel, pragmatic leaders of the Indonesian government found it necessary for the time being to retain the operations of foreign enterprises. As a result, the Indonesian economy remained dominated by Dutch and other foreign multinational corporations, even after the transfer of sovereignty in December 1949. It was not until the late 1950s and the early 1960s that these foreign companies were either nationalised or expropriated by the Indonesian government. On the contrary, Ho Chi Minh and the DRV government took the view that resistance against French colonial forces and the task of nation-building were inseparable. During the escalation of the war with the French, which had commenced in December 1946, the economic task was generally interpreted to be economic resistance. Nationalist efforts to increase production to meet the needs of a war economy complemented sabotage missions against French businesses. This was partly why French business own-ers withdrew quickly from North Vietnam in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The restrained administrative pressures imposed by the Ngo Dinh Diem government set in motion a rapid liquidation of most of the remaining French enterprises and Chinese businesses in South Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

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290 Abstracts of Doctoral Theses on the Indonesian Economy

This study argues that despite differences in political situations resulting in the adoption of divergent economic strategies, the Vietnamese and Indonesian lead-erships were in fact pursuing a similar long-term goal: namely, to obtain an inde-pendent national economy. The Indonesian government was determined to get rid of the economic legacy of Dutch colonialism by placing the whole economy under strong state control and ownership, in accordance with the spirit of Guided Democracy and Guided Economy of the late 1950s and early 1960s. This effort much resembled the socialist transformation of North Vietnam in the late 1950s and the many means by which the government of South Vietnam concentrated economic power in its hands during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The Effects of Modern Food-Retail Development on Consumers, Producers, Wholesalers, and Traditional Retailers: The Case of West Java

Sandra Sunanto ([email protected]) Accepted 2013, ISS of Erasmus Rotterdam University

An increase in the number of supermarkets and hypermarkets in Indonesia in the last decade suggests that the Indonesian government has sought to liberal-ise the country’s food-retail sector to encourage the growth of local economies. This thesis examines the effects of such developments on actors in the retail value chain in West Java from 2002 to 2010—from agricultural producers and local food processors to wholesalers, traditional retailers, and consumers. It inds that producers processors, and wholesalers of fresh goods (such as fruit, vegetables, local dairy products, and processed meat) who are able to meet the procure-ment requireprocure-ments of nearby supermarkets and hypermarkets can beneit from the high demand from consumers for local produce in modern food retailers. It also inds that consumers’ store preferences have shifted away from traditional retailers towards supermarkets and hypermarkets, owing to better product avail-ability, quality, price, and variety. Consequently, traditional retailers, particularly traditional markets, tend to suffer from the entry of modern food retailers.

The study draws on interviews with farmers, local food processors, wholesal-ers, procurement managwholesal-ers, and owners of supermarkets and hypermarkets; sur-veys of 550 consumers in West Java; monthly sales data from local food processors, agricultural producers, and vegetable and fruit wholesalers; and National Socio-economic Survey (Susenas) data on the monthly spending on food and non-food items of households. It applies non-parametric statistical tests, such as McNemar and Chi-square tests, to hypotheses about the effects of modern food retailers on the store preferences of consumers and on the proits of traditional retailers, and it uses a regression analysis to test the hypothesis that modern food-retail devel-opments beneit agricultural producers, local food processors, and wholesalers.

The results indicate that traditional markets, particularly sellers of fruit, veg-etables, meat, and ish, suffer most from the arrival of modern retailers. Some actors in the retail value chain beneit from the developments, whereas small suppliers, in particular, need to increase their knowledge and skills to meet the requirements of modern retail procurement systems. Building farmers’ groups