The Indonesian Economic Development Strategy

In bestselling book Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen warned policy makers not to only use economic growth to create aggregate income. He then suggested that so-called economic growth be used as a means to develop social services for the community.

Subsidies in education, health social safety nets should be set as the main priority in the government long-term plan in which to create sustainability in the area of economic development. This is what Sen called growth-mediated social arrangements.

It is interesting, in this context, to refer to statistical analyses recently presented by scholars that showed life expectancy is not enhanced by the growth of GDP per head but rather tends to correlate with public expenditure on health care.

A more phenomenal case on social expenditure, especially in basic education, can be learned from Japan. It is sometimes forgotten that Japan had a higher rate of literacy than Europe had even at the period of Meiji restoration in the mid-nineteen century, when industrialization had not yet occurred but had gone for ages in Europe.

Japan's economic development was clearly much helped by the human resource advancement related to the social opportunities that were generated. The so-called East Asian Miracle, to some extent, mimics the similar connection.

The aforementioned goal has been basically summarized in the Washington Consensus through some of its points.

The first point is fiscal discipline, which serves as the basic condition in achieving national budget sustainability. Unfortunately the spirit is not followed by most of the ministries and government offices. They tend to raise their budget plan not because of need but out of a desire to have a higher budget than the previous year.

This animal spirit has caused the budget to lose its prudence and become very prone to external shocks. Fiscal discipline serves as the foundation by which we can move to the second point which is public expenditure focus on sectors that can create equal distribution of income.

The sectors are as follows: public infrastructure, health care and primary education. The creation of public access will undoubtedly create the overall community welfare.

Another point is tax reform. The newest general taxation policy (UU KUP) has most likely accommodated this point. One of its achievements is the expansion of tax base. The success story of tax reform is expected to become the dominant actor in offering a high contribution to the budget revenue.

Another important point to note is about liberalization, which covers trade and foreign investment. To some extent, trade is almost synonymous with a country's welfare. Economic welfare is the most notable goal that links in this activity, in other words, trade is the engine of growth.

Over these past few decades we have witnessed the evolution of trade in Indonesia, which has a substantial transformation of trade structures. The vast amount of trade has been very likely steered up by the amount of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) inflows.

It is clear that FDI is trade-related in nature. With its open and outward-looking economies, Indonesia is highly dependent on foreign investment for its economic growth.

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