Study warns RI is behind in development

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A recent study indicates that poverty alleviation programs will fall short of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals because they don't make capital and production means available to the poor.

"The government has been concentrating on providing the poor with cash, cheap rice and free schooling. This will help them survive on a daily basis, but it doesn't touch the real issues of poverty," Sugeng Bahagijo, a researcher with the Indonesian Movement for Anti-Impoverishment of People (GAPRI), told a forum on Tuesday.

GAPRI's Participatory Poverty Assessment is based on interviews with representatives from poor communities in 17 municipalities and regencies in Southeast Sulawesi, South Sulawesi, East Nusa Tenggara and Madura island in East Java.

According to Central Statistics Agency data, the national poverty rate stood at 16.68 percent, or 37.17 million people.

As such it lags behind the target of 11.6 percent or 26 million people set out in the government's mid-term development plan.

The plan was formulated in line with the MDGs, including the goal of reducing poverty to half of 1990 levels by 2015.

Sugeng said the government should provide assets, capital and the means of production to the poor because these were essential to enable self-sufficiency. Cash, cheap rice and free schooling, on the other hand, only addressed symptoms of poverty, he said.

"The government should ask why the poor can't afford to send their children to school or even to feed themselves. The roots of poverty lie in fact that the poor do not have access to capital or the means to develop small-scale businesses."

He added that the poor were trapped in a vicious circle of borrowing money from loan sharks because they couldn't provide collateral for bank loans.

"It's a vicious circle because the poor spend the money they earn to pay back their loans."

He said the government would not necessarily have to introduce new financing institutions to help the poor. Instead, he said, existing non-formal finance bodies could be modified. He gave as examples community-based banking groups and the arisan, a regular gathering at which every participant contributes a certain amount of money.

Sugeng also said the government should provide business management training to poor people because without it borrowed money would be harder to properly manage.

"Group control is also important to make sure the poor don't misuse the loans for other things," he said.

"We also need to protect the poor and help them brace against external changes which can affect their lives, such as the appropriation of their land or property."

Dwi Astuti, another GAPRI researcher, said the government should have seriously considered the voice of the poor in formulating poverty alleviation programs.

"The government tends to ignore the role of the poor in policy and this is dangerous because these policies can later turn out to miss the target," she said in the study.

Present at an event marking the completion of the study were former military chief Gen. (ret.) Wiranto, former House of Representatives speaker Akbar Tandjung and Democrat Party legislator Angelina Sondakh. (lln)