| Abstraksi Narasi |
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Dark clouds hung over Jakarta this May. Some were physical: the eruption of Gunung Galunggung near Tasikmalaya made the air murky and the rain filthy in Jakarta. Some were political: the deaths through accidents and riots during the election campaign threw a pall over the `festival democracy`. And perhaps the most ominous for the long term were economic: the glut on the world oil market appeared to signal the beginning of the end of the extra-ordinary boom in oil prices which has been the engine driving the most rapid period of growth in Indonesia`s history.
While the economic cost of the Galunggung eruption is difficult to evaluate, the budgetary cost of organising the election was put at Rp 131 billion. The economic cost however was much greater. During the campaign period, Jakarta hotels reported their occupancy rate had fallen by a third, and there was some evidence of capital flight resulting in high interest rates on the Jakarta interbank market. In addition, much of the administrative workforce was engaged in political activities in the three months prior to the election.
But if politics had an economic cost, economic success had a decided political pay-off. Golkar campaigned strongly on the economic achievements of the regime, claiming credit for rural electrification, expansion of education and higher wages. The Home Affairs Minister asserted that the community had had to contribute only one per cent of development expenditures on development were the result of the Government`s efforts. The World Bank`s recategorisation of Indonesia as a `Middle Income` country was used as evidence of the nations progress. Some PPP campaigners criticised Indonesia`s reliance on foreign loans or attacked Golkar as the`bosses` party`, but generally opposition campaigning was concentrated on non-economic issues such as appleals to Moslem solidarity or to Sukarno`s memory. While the closed nature of campaigning in the countryside makes an assessment of Golkar`s overall success difficult, the Government party`s improved showing in the capital does seem to confirm that its campaign (and fear of instability) won support from voters.
Understandably, Government spokesmen tried to play down the extent of the international crisis in the oil markets during the campaign, claiming (for example) that the cutback in production decided by OPEC in Vienna was only for three months. However, even a three month cutback will mean a considerable fall in Indonesia`s oil revenues, with little immediate prospect of a rapid increase in non-oil domestic revenues. While optimists see the emerging resources gap as only temporary, others are more concerned about medium term prospects for the economy. Export performance since the devaluation, while encouraging for some products, has not overall been very spectacular and, athough Indonesia`a debt service ratio is currently quite low, there is a feeling that the proceeds of a greatly expanded program of foreign borrowing might not be wisely used.
Labour force data from the 1980 Census indicate that the proportion of the labour force in agriculture has declined markedly, although agriculture continues to employ ever half the labour force. Employment growth in manufacturing has been slower than for any other sector except agriculture while growth in output per worker has been very high; these trends indicate an apparent increase in the capital intensity of the manufacturing sector during the 1970s. Those sectors of the economy which absorbed the largest share of the inter-censal growth in the labour force (agriculture, trade and services) had the lowest increases in output per worker. |
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