Loans

We have continued to receive loans to alleviate poverty in this country. The latest one was from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) which provided no less than US$400 million to cover health and education programs for the poor.

What does the loan mean? That an institution like ADB still trust us? Or that we have really been unsuccessful in eradicating poverty that we must continue to rely on ADB and others?

According to the Statistics Agency, BPS, there are no less than 36 million people who must be included in the category of poor in Indonesia today. Other sources have put the figure at as high as 71 million.

If the authorities cannot agree on the number of poor people in this country, probably it is too much to expect them to be able to take care of the poverty alleviation programs.

On one occasion they even admitted that their target, a poverty level of 8.2% by 2009, is unattainable. The current economic growth rate of around 5%-6% is insufficient to provide all new job-seekers with employment, let alone dent Indonesia's huge unemployment tally.

For the record: the government's definition of poverty—less money than is needed to afford a diet of 2,100 calories a day—is Rp152,847 (US$16.80) a month. This measure is well below the more-widely used benchmark of US$1 a day.

While ADB has its “noble” objectives, we must also underscore the fact that what the institution gave us was a loan, not a grant, something that we must, in the end, repay.

If we don’t properly manage the ADB loan—as well as those from other donor countries or agencies—we may end up having more difficulties instead of solutions in the future.

One thing ironic was while we, on one hand, always say that we are short of funds to handle poverty eradication programs, on the other we seem to have so many—some even say unlimited—fund sources for political activities like gubernatorial or district head elections.

Even the newly sworn-in KPU members already requested for budget of almost Rp48 trillion to run the 2009 General Elections. An exorbitant elections budget indeed for a country with a large number of poor people!