10 - Some Features of Indonesia's Economic Development During the Last Twenty-Five Years (1993)

Summary

Introductory Note: In 1993 the Government of Japan took the initiative to organize The Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) and I was invited as a guest speaker, in particular on the agenda item “Asian Experience and African Development”. I was very encouraged that Japan, one of the richest countries in the world, gave special attention to the suffering of millions of people in Africa. In my presentation I emphasized the many similarities of the challenges faced by Indonesia and the countries in Africa, including the diversity of its population and the many challenges to be faced. During that occasion, my colleagues who also attended the Conference (professors Sadli, Emil Salim and my other colleagues) had occasions to interact with delegates from different countries in Africa, which later on was followed up with many visits by Sadli and Emil Salim to those countries. The intensive interactions with the actual problems they saw in Africa strengthened their convictions in arguing for the relief of the debt-ridden countries in their meetings with officials of the multilateral agencies (the World Bank and the IMF) as well as in their meetings with representatives of the highly developed countries. It was encouraging news for all of us when the multilateral agencies finally introduce the HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) debt relief for the highly indebted developing countries, although the pace of relief was unfortunately slow.

It is a great honour for me to be invited as a guest speaker to the Tokyo International Conference on African Development. The theme of the second agenda of the Conference is “Asian Experience and African Development”. Since my knowledge on development is limited to the experience of one country only — Indonesia — perhaps the best contribution I can provide to the Conference is to present some features of the economic development of Indonesia during the last twenty five years.

In order to provide the necessary setting, let me start with some statistics and a little bit of history. Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world, consisting of more than 17,000 islands. Its length from west to east is about the distance from Accra to Mogadishu, or from London to Kuwait, or from San Francisco to somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean east of New York.