SBY Sees 7.7% GDP Growth, Fall in Poverty By End of Term

August 17, 2010

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Jakarta. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he was seeking to achieve annual growth of 7.7 percent and create 10.7 million new jobs by the end of his second term in 2014.

He also aimed to cut the poverty rate by about a third to between 8 percent and 10 percent over the next four years, the president said on Tuesday in his annual state of the nation address to the legislature.

“Improving Indonesia’s economy must benefit its poorest citizens, Yudhoyono said. “Development is useless if more people are marginalized. Growth is useless if the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider.”

Yudhoyono was elected to a second five-year term in July 2009 on promises to boost economic growth by cleaning up corruption, speeding up infrastructure development and reforming the sluggish civil service.

“This fight will face challenges and resistance as happened in other countries, but we won’t be discouraged,” Yudhoyono said. “We all want to see corruption eliminated from Indonesia.”

Indonesia’s ranking in Transparency International’s 2009 corruption perception index improved to 111 from 126 a year earlier, according to the organization’s Web site.

The index measures the perceived level of public-sector corruption in 180 countries and territories around the world.

But Yudhoyono has been slow to deliver results and has failed to wholeheartedly support his top reformers against the corrupt political and business elite, proving a disappointment to many ordinary Indonesians.

Yudhoyono has failed to defend his top reformers — former Finance Minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati and Vice President Boediono over their decision to bail out small lender Bank Century.

The politicking by members of his own coalition has exposed rifts within his government and his inability to exert control over key coalition members, and distracted from pushing ahead with reforms and passing legislation.

Since its inauguration, Yudhoyono’s second term government has passed only a handful of bills, none of which address the issues investors see as most urgent: labor law reform, clean governance and bureaucratic reform.

Anton Gunawan, an economist at Bank Danamon in Jakarta, said progress had been slow, with a poor working relationship between central and regional governments and disruption from a legislature full of vested interests.

Other analysts agreed. “What people are looking for is the action, not the words. That’s where we haven’t seen much being delivered,” said David Kiu, a political risk analyst at Eurasia Group.