Can Indonesia’s economic growth be sustained? Maybe for a few more decades, but even Indonesia’s rich natural resources are finite. Already, the nation’s oil reserves are dwindling faster than in any other Asian country— and Indonesia became a net oil importer during the last decade— while it is exporting most of its approximately 5 billion tons of coal reserves to China and India. Worse, the money generated from selling these national assets is not used to help rebalance Indonesia’s economy towards high-end manufacturing.
Providing access to cheap credit is an unsustainable growth strategy. Already, Indonesians exhausted from trying to keep up with the Mallarangeng family seem to turn to forms of sarcasm similar to that of debt-ridden Americans. Grinding through Jakarta’s infamous traffic jam a few months ago, I spotted several bumper stickers on the back of upmarket vehicles, saying in the local vernacular “Don’t crash into my car, I am still paying it off.” Plenty of Indonesians can no longer repay their debts and therefore no longer consume. The bludgeoning to death of an Indonesian citizen in 2011 by debt collectors on the payroll of Citibank may be a scary sign of things to come.
It’s politics, stupid!
In their 2012 book, Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James Robison, professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University respectively, show the central importance of political institutions for achieving sustainable and inclusive growth. While economic institutions are important determinants of a country’s wealth, political institutions are paramount since they define what economic institutions a country has. In this respect, Indonesia’s achievements look bleak.
Since the collapse of the New Order dictatorship in 1998, the government has missed almost every opportunity to turn its economic boom into a positive force for all Indonesians. Serious and comprehensive reforms of Indonesia’s political institutions have been anathema to the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono government and most of the president’s political appointees almost from day one in their decade long reign.
Masked behind pro-poor rhetoric and lukewarm support for symbolic reform agencies such as the Corruption Eradication Commission, Indonesia’s elites have used their political power to protect their personal interests and keep the judiciary in shambles. The bureaucracy remains completely unreformed fifteen years after the demise of Suharto and corruption continues to be rampant. A serious discussion about Indonesia’s systemic corruption problem has never occurred during Yudhoyono’s two tenures. Instead, the emphasis has been on arresting “bad” politicians.
Indonesia’s elites have also done everything in their power, the power they do have, to channel the country’s riches into their own pockets. The lack of will to develop a truly prosperous Indonesia is most visible in the government’s failure to integrate Indonesia’s internal market. This has had deleterious effects for the domestic economy. Indonesia, for instance, imports almost half of the salt consumed in the country from places such as Australia, Germany, Singapore and New Zealand because decrepit infrastructure and predatory taxes make it cheaper to import the commodity from the German mines of Berchtesgaden 7,000 miles away than from Indonesia’s seashores.
Similarly, the government’s failure to curb corruption, rent-seeking and red tape has turned Indonesia essentially into a high-cost economy shun by manufacturers. While Americans’ sneakers would most likely have been produced in Indonesia fifteen years ago, this is now done in places such as Vietnam or China. Ironically, Indonesia’s steady growth is also a result of the country’s detachment from volatile world markets.
Stuff made in Indonesia, anyone?
Due to a lack of robust political institutions undergirding Indonesia’s economy, inequality has increased in Indonesia in recent years. At the time of writing, around 120 million Indonesia lived on less than two U.S. dollars a day.
It remains to be seen how long Indonesia’s elites can ignore the other side of Indonesia’s boom. They would certainly have enough clues in their own lives.The Indonesian trade diplomat who so vigorously advocated Indonesia’s place in the BRIC group in our discussion a few years ago has since been posted to the United States. Rather than advocating space- and IT-technologies in the tech clusters of Boston and San Francisco like her fellow trade diplomats from China and India, she is now promoting Indonesian rattan furniture at trade shows in North Carolina.
Michael Buehler is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University, and an Associate Fellow with the Asia Society.
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investor
Indonesia to discredit your writing, I really do not think quality, impressed by the thought made you personally. seems so stupid. you may write the above article, that investors hesitate to invest in Indonesia. but I think investors are smart enough to judge, and not be fooled by your article. Indonesian economy is very strong against the crisis, the crisis of U.S. and European crisis, your accusations are false about the Indonesian economy, it is unreasonable. Indonesian economy rests on the strong purchasing power of the people, so that the world economic crisis has no effect on the Indonesian economy. some economic survey, predict Indonesia will enter the order of the world's top 10 economies by 2030.
khodi
well, all are the facts, the economy still centralized in Java Islands, prefer to mega infrastructure rather than development outside Java, with country that has abundant of natural resources, we still import salt, , casava, onion. People at the border still depend on neigbor country's subsidize goods. Elite politics fighting for group and personal interest. However, am pretty sure that the people of this1 trillion GDP country , will fight for the best for their country and Indonesia will prevail :)
KuKuKaChu
Similar sentiments were expressed recently with this interview with the head of an Indonesian business consultancy: http://okusi.net/garydean/works/MeetGaryDean.html
drift
Clearly the economic analysis in this article is lack of strong foundation and fact, but fueled by political tendencies.
Even a car bumper stickers could lead the author's opinion about Indonesia economy.
Please, do your expertise in your field.
Since you are expert in Political Science, you are potentially misleading at reviewing economic with your political tendencies.