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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies
ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20
IN THIS ISSUE
Ross H. McLeod
To cite this article: Ross H. McLeod (2007) IN THIS ISSUE, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 43:3, 293-294, DOI: 10.1080/00074910701759897
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074910701759897
Published online: 18 Apr 2008.
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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Vol. 43, No. 3, 2007: 293–4
ISSN 0007-4918 print/ISSN 1472-7234 online/07/030293-2 © 2007 Indonesia Project ANU DOI: 10.1080/00074910701759897
IN THIS ISSUE
Notes from the editor
In the new ‘Survey of recent developments’, Sadayuki Takii and Eric Ramstetter report continuing acceleration of economic growth, although infl ation is again tend-ing upwards, caustend-ing interest rate reductions to be put on hold. Investment spend-ing is seen to have peaked at the end of 2006 and, while still healthy, its growth has declined noticeably in 2007. The introduction of yet another policy package to improve the investment climate runs the risk of adding to cynicism about the lack of real progress. The authors warn that the central bank’s policies are encourag-ing capital infl ow by creating an arbitrage opportunity at its own expense. Certain important items in the draft 2008 budget are seen as optimistic, and the assumption concerning world oil prices implausibly low. Export performance has been ade-quate, although Indonesia’s competitiveness in recent years has varied markedly across major commodities and markets. Labour-intensive commodities have been performing relatively poorly, in part because policy interventions artifi cially raise the cost of employing low-skill labour; of particular concern is that the number of workers employed in manufacturing was no higher in 2007 than in 2001.
Anies Baswedan contributes this year’s extended discussion of political affairs, based on his presentation to the Indonesia Update conference at the Australian National University in September. He focuses on the diffi culties faced by the cur-rent president, who won offi ce by a large majority—but as the candidate of a politi-cal party with limited parliamentary representation—and then discusses proposed changes to political laws, some of which would make it more diffi cult for candi-dates without the backing of a strong party to run for the presidency. His paper also analyses changing patterns of electoral behaviour—especially at local govern-ment level—and the response of political parties to these changes. It is argued that although there have been large shifts in support for individual parties, voters still tend to stick with parties of broadly the same ideological persuasion.
Louis Wells provides an illuminating paper on the power generation industry, which documents the sudden emergence of private sector involvement in the last few years of the Soeharto era, and the collapse of agreements between the state elec-tricity company and the numerous consortia of foreign and domestic partners—the latter overwhelmingly dominated by family and cronies of the then president—as a consequence of the crisis in the late 1990s. Wells argues that the government has failed to learn several crucial lessons from this episode, given that it is still keen to involve the private sector so as to minimise its own fi nancing burden. The les-sons include the need to ensure that the risks borne by investors are commensurate with their expected returns, and to consider carefully the attributes of these partici-pants—such as experience working in, and commitment to, developing countries.
The paper by Harun focuses on attempts to introduce more sophisticated sys-tems of accountancy within the bureaucracy. The author points out that trans-parent and meaningful fi nancial accounting is an essential aspect of democracy.
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294 In this issue: notes from the editor
It is needed by elected representatives of the people if they are to safeguard the interests of their constituents, and by voters and taxpayers themselves if they are to assess how national assets and tax revenues are being managed. Attempts at reform have not been particularly fruitful, partly because greater transparency threatens the interests of many of the bureaucrats involved, and partly because current human resource management practices fail to supply the bureaucracy with professional accounting skills in the quantity and of the quality required.
Wahyu Sutiyono also focuses on human resource management (HRM) prob-lems, this time in the state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector. Based on pre-crisis fi eldwork for her PhD dissertation, this paper presents comparative case studies of a large SOE (Telkom) and a large private sector conglomerate (Astra Interna-tional). The key fi nding is that companies that want to optimise their performance need to think carefully about recruitment, employee training and development, performance management and remuneration. By contrast with Astra, Telkom suf-fered the disadvantage of having inherited a relatively infl exible civil service-style HRM system from the Dutch, which paid inadequate attention to these matters. Notwithstanding attempts at reforming its system to put much greater emphasis on employee performance rather than seniority, Telkom’s HRM system retains many features that constrain its capacity to recruit high-calibre staff and stimulate them to optimal performance in today’s competitive market.
We also present here a new set of abstracts of recently completed PhD dis-sertations on the Indonesian economy and closely related fi elds. The number of abstracts we have been able to publish has increased steadily each year since this series began in 2003, and the total number published now stands at 35. This year’s abstracts cover work on monetary policy analysis; employment and wages; edu-cation and growth; coffee commodity chains; manufacturing and the crisis; post-crisis programs in education and health; institutions and growth; cartel behaviour; political connection and trade protection in multinational corporations; entrepre-neurial strategies of ethnic Chinese business groups; and trade fi nance and com-mercial relations between Europeans and Chinese in colonial Indonesia.
It is a particular pleasure to present reviews of two books focusing on the chief architect of economic policy throughout the Soeharto era, Professor Widjojo Nitisastro, issued a few months before his 80th birthday in September 2007. The fi rst book is a collection of impressions of the man by his Indonesian friends; the second presents tributes by a large number of foreigners who have had profes-sional dealings with him. We thought it fi tting to provide both an Indonesian and a foreign (Australian) perspective on both books. These are followed by the review of a memoir by another who made his mark on Indonesia: the late, greatly admired, John (Jack) Bresnan, a former Ford Foundation representative in Indo-nesia. Other reviews deal with books on the failure of international aid to ful-fi l its promise; informal (non-state) approaches to dealing with social security; the international migration of Indonesian women in search of work elsewhere in Asia; anti-Chinese violence in Indonesia; ‘two track diplomacy’ among the ASEAN nations; a history of Tempo, Indonesia’s pre-eminent current affairs news weekly (which also serves as a partial history of the New Order itself); and fi nally, the increasingly important role of large business corporations in Southeast Asia.
Selamat membaca!
Ross H. McLeod
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