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TANJUNGPINANG, KEPULAUAN RIAU] Date: 19 January 2016, At: 22:06
Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies
ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20
Renewing Poverty Reduction Strategy in Indonesia
Terence H. Hull
To cite this article:
Terence H. Hull (2000) Renewing Poverty Reduction Strategy in Indonesia,
Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 36:2, 139-141, DOI: 10.1080/00074910012331338923
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074910012331338923
Published online: 18 Aug 2006.
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Vol 36 No 2, August 2000, pp. 139–41
Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies
Seminar Report
RENEWING POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGY
IN INDONESIA
Terence H. Hull
Australian National University
On 1 August 2000, the national planning agency, Bappenas, convened a seminar to consider the medium and long-term strategies needed to alleviate, and eventually to eliminate, poverty in Indonesia.1 The focus of the seminar was on the experience of the social safety net (SSN or JPS) programs developed since 1997 to deal with the continued poverty of about 22 million chronically poor, and the re-impoverisation of upwards of 44 million people affected by the financial crisis.
Bappenas Chair Djunaedi Hadisumarto opened the seminar with a speech outlining lessons from the SSN programs. Bappenas has found that the direct and speedy disbursement of funds reduces the opportunity for corruption, but that there is also a need to make efforts to incorporate civil society in oversight roles, and to improve the capacity of district and village governments to carry out programs of poverty alleviation. Should the government be working to ‘empower’ various groups or should this be left to the NGOs (non-government organisations)? was a question he posed to the participants. If he intended this to be a rhetorical device, the papers and discussion of the next six hours showed that empowerment and decentralisation are issues that have yet to achieve consensus opinions among academics and policy makers.
Six invited papers given by the representatives of lenders, donors, academics and NGOs set out some of the dimensions of the debate about poverty alleviation. Pomeroy of the World Bank picked up the themes set by Djunaedi to call for a reinvigorated strategy of poverty alleviation based on community empowerment and government responsibility. Joe Fernandez argued the case for understanding poverty as a product of structural factors that make some people rich at the expense of the poor.
140 Terence H. Hull
The present writer focused on the need to protect the quantity and quality of data on poverty at a time of government budget cuts. Nobuhisa Takeda, representing JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency), discussed the experience of a number of pilot projects that revealed the weaknesses of the SSN and the potential strengths of local government in developing interventions. UNSFIR (United Nations Support Facility for Indonesian Recovery) analysts Satish Mishra and Iyanatul Islam praised the government’s experience in social protection programs and called for a Presidential Commission on Poverty to promote analytical work on the issue and work toward a national consensus for a five-year poverty reduction strategy. Bakti Setiawan from Gadjah Mada University called for the central government to clarify the different roles of central and local institutions in the effort to reduce poverty. An additional paper was given by the Bappenas Deputy Chair for Macroeconomics, Soekarno Wirokartono, to set out the current thinking of the agency on the challenge of managing the transition to lower government budgets and more decentralised functions, and of responding to intractable demands for poverty relief.
The seminar was a lively affair, made all the more so by two discussants from the University of Indonesia (Mohamad Ikhsan from the Faculty of Economics and Imam Budi Prasodjo from the Faculty of Social and Political Studies) who raised critical, pointed and sometimes humorous points to engage the paper presenters and the audience. Gone were the set-piece formalities that often characterised the official seminars of the New Order. Speakers, officials and participants alike evoked the spirit of reformasi to give a foundation for criticism of policy and analysis of data. The terminology was subject to detailed criticism—poverty, planning, autonomy, empowerment, democracy and participation were all put under the microscope, and participants were urged to ‘question the dominant paradigms’ even when they might not seem to be dominant. Direct attacks were made on the World Bank for being responsible for the development of dependency, and on Bappenas for attempting to maintain central planning in a time of decentralisation. Equally direct and effective defence of these institutions was made in a discussion that had no resolution, but also little ill-will. Some sense of the instability of the current political environment was given when just after noon the room shook from the bomb blast that injured the Philippines ambassador a few hundred metres away from the Bappenas building.
At the end of the day former minister and current member of the Council of Economic Advisors Boediono took up the challenge of summarising the discussion. He set out five points:
141 Seminar Report: Renewing Poverty Reduction Strategy in Indonesia
• There is a need for a coordinating framework—a national strategy— that recognises the achievements of the last 30 years while working to overcome shortcomings of the New Order. This requires the determination of realistic milestones over the short and medium term. • All stakeholders need to be involved. This should start with effective networking, but will probably progress to the establishment of task forces and working groups.
• Since decentralisation is inevitable, high priority must be given to developing the capacity of regions to plan and carry out poverty alleviation/reduction activities.
• There is an immediate need to influence the budget for 2001 to ensure that a basic political and moral commitment to poverty alleviation is manifest in financial commitments.
• In all these activities the government will need to ensure that the quantity and quality of data needed for planning and monitoring are assured through both financial and organisational commitments. It is a mark of the insecurities of the times that these conclusions were embraced with a sense of unanimity by the participants, but also with a feeling of uncertainty that they can be achieved.
Note
1 The seminar was chaired by Herman Haeruman Js, the Deputy Chairman for Regional Development and Natural Resources. For information on the papers and seminar agenda, contact Sumedi Andono Mulyo or Erman A. Rahman at Biro Pemberdayaan Masyarakat dan Pedesaan, Bappenas, on 62 21 334 195 (phone and fax).
