| Abstraksi Narasi |
: |
The period under review has been overshadowed by the financial crisis of the state oil enterprise Pertamina. For some years past Pertamina was known to be borrowing heavily overseas to finance some of its large and wide-term, to avoid the exigencies of government approval for longer-term external borrowing and in the expectation that short-term debt could be "rolled over" from year to year. This proved increasingly difficult as international money markets tightened in mid-1974. For some months Pertamina managed to get by on the quarterly instaments of oil revenue due from foreign companies and its own tax liabilities which and Government permitted it to withhold. But late in February and again early in March of this year, Pertamina was unable to repay or refinance on the due date short-term debt of about $100 million owing to overseas financial institutions.
The Government, greatly concerned about the possible repercussions of a Pertamina default on Indonesia`s image and credit standing, stepped in decisively. Through the Central Bank it paid off the two loans and guaranteed all of Pertamina`s overseas debt. It also announced that henceforth all overseas borrowing by Indonesian state enterprises would be in the name of Bank Indonesian state enterprises would be in the name of Bank Indonesia or the Ministry of Finance. In the following weeks, further far reaching measures were reported to get at the root of the problem---the proliferation of Pertamina`s empire, with quite inadequate accountability to or control by the central government. Searching examination of Pertamina`s financial accounts and of the economic soundness of the major projects, especially the PT Krakatau steel project, was initiated, the managing director PT Krakatau was replaced, and the Minister for Mining let it be known that the Government planned to divest Pertamina of all activities not closely related to the oil industry.
The vigour with which the Government tackled the situation impressed the Inter-Governmental Group for Indonesia (IGGI) consortium at its Amsterdam meeting of 11-13 May. It readily accepted the case put to it reports by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that the need for large-scale external had not relieved Indonesia of the Indonesian people was capital if the poverty of the masses of the Indonesian people was to be substantially alleviated over the next decade. It agreed to the Indonesian Government`s request for nearly $1 billion of project aid and its plans to negotiate during 1975/6 another $1 billion or so in project loans at commercial or concessional rates and to fund Pertamina`s short-term external debt by medium-term borrowing from overseas financial institutions.
Pertamina`s financial troubles have affected the Government`s financial record for the past fiscal year, 1974/5, both externally and internally. Indonesia`s international reserves, instead of the expected large increase, showed little change over the year, and the central government budget, in place of the hoped-for surplus tof Rp 230 billion, barely broke even, and this only by virtue of some adjustment of accounting for rice and fertiliser subsidies.
For the current fiscal year 1975/6, sufficiently revised forecasts are not as yet available, either for the budget or for the balance of payments, though major changes will undoubtedly become necessary as the year progresses.
Thanks partly to the measures of monetary restraint adopted in April 1974 and partly to large rice imports and a good harvest, the rate of inflation has been brought under much more effective control than seemed likely a year ago. As regards the price of rice, the price ceiling has in recent months presented much less of a problem than the floor price, mainly because of the difficulties of the new rice procurement policy which were discussed in the last Survey.
While the Pertamina crisis has commanded the headlines, there has in fact been much news of economic, social and administrative development, planned and (less conspicuously) realised. Despite the much more restrictive climate for foreign investors which has developed in the past eighteen months, the flow of foreign investment approvals has if anything increased, though to a much larger extent from Japan and other Asian countries and much less from the United States. |
Unduh Dokumen Berkas PDF Utama