| Abstraksi Narasi |
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An important episode in Indonesia`s economic development, the oil boom of 1974-77, has ended. The coming year will be the first of a new phase in which oil export earnings will no longer grow dramatically and may even, for a while, decline. This has important implications for the balance of payments and the public finances.
Estimates of the balance of payments in the fiscal year 1987/9, published with the budget papers, suggest that oil export earnings and international reserves will rise by a further $350 million or so. But this estimate appears to have anticipated the hoped-for 5 per cent increase in the oil price which did not eventuate at the OPEC meeting at Caracas. In view of the subdued prospects for the world economy in 1987, it will not be easy for Indonesia to achieve a comensating increase in non-oil exports.
The budget for 1978/9 which was presented to Parliament on 5 January also envisages an unlikely 6 per cent rise in oil company tax receipts. Moreover, it appears to assume an increase in domestic prices of oil products, such as petrol and kerosene, which is bound to be unpopuler and has not yet been announced. Even so, total government expenditure, after rising by more than 30 per cent in each of the last three years, is estimated to rise by only 14 per cent, which may mean little if any increase in real terms.
Looking back over the last five years, it is apparent that Indonesia, thanks to the oil bonanza, has been able to maintain an abnormally high rate of growth of consumption and capital formation. She now faces a difficult problem of adjustment to lower rates of growth.
Meanwhile, there is little evidence of change in domestic monetary and business conditions. The inflation rate, while not, as had been hoped, kept down to one-digit level in 1977, was only a little above it, an estimated 12 per cent. It should be possible to keep it down to that figure in 1978 if the present rupiah-dollar exchange rate is maintained. In adaptation to a lower rate of inflation, bank interest rates were reduced at the turn of the year.
Problems of agriculture and food supplies continue to occupy much of the Government`s attention. Rice production failed to reach the target of over 16 million tons in 1977 and, despite ample overall supplies thanks to very large rice imports, serious shortages developed in some areas in the latter months of the year. The Government has reacted by initiating various schemes for emergency supplies to critical areas and by announcing another package of measures to encourage rice production.
Official concern to keep the food situation well under control during the pre-harvest season was heightened by the political tension that developed in the months preceding the presidential elections scheduled for 23 March of this year. Increasingly stridents calls for `clean government` by student groups and much of the press led to arrests of student leaders and suspension of six of the main national newspapers on 21 January for a fortnight. |
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