SULAWESI

Andi Haswidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

With the public purse strings still tight and most government spending being used to cover day-to-day costs and servicing the country’s sovereign debt, Indonesia will have to rely on the private sector to help reduce poverty and unemployment.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla said Wednesday that Indonesia would need at least Rp 1,000 trillion (about US$111 billion) in new investment in order to achieve higher economic growth, which was essential to significantly reducing the country’s currently high poverty and unemployment rates.

“The money, of course, should come from three sources, the government, the private sector and foreign investment,” Kalla told a conference on public policy held by the Prakarsa Group, an NGO focused on social welfare issues.

Kalla said that the current growth rate was not sufficient to alleviate poverty and unemployment.

In order to create significant numbers of new jobs, growth would need to be at least 7 percent. “For this, we will need Rp 1,000 trillion in investment,” he said.

According to government estimates, every one percent growth in GDP creates 250,000 new jobs.

The government failed to achieve its 6.2 percent growth target last year, with the figure ending up at 5.5 percent due to disappointing consumer spending growth of 3.2 percent growth and direct investment growth of 2.9 percent. The government is targeting a growth rate of 6.3 percent this year.

Speaking to The Jakarta Post at the conference, Prakarsa executive director Binny Buchori said that the government had yet to develop a comprehensive policy on social welfare.

“There is a disconnection between the improvements in the macroeconomic fundamentals and poverty alleviation. So far, the government’s actions have only been ad hoc in nature, reactive.”

“We don’t have the proper infrastructure for health insurance, social security or occupational insurance, and we don’t invest enough in education. If we did, it would obviously produce more sustainable benefits compared to giving direct cash handouts to the poor following the fuel price hikes,” Binny said.

The poverty rate stood at about 17 percent of the country’s 220 million people last year, according to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), which categorizes people living below the poverty line as those who earn less than $1.55 a day.

Poverty alleviation has always been on government’s priority list, Kalla said. However, the government did not have the money to make a significant dent in poverty as it had to allocate 45 percent of this year’s Rp 763 trillion budget for subsidies and debt servicing alone.

According to figures from the Finance Ministry, the government plans to spend Rp 54.8 trillion on amortization, Rp 85 trillion on interest payments and Rp 134.9 trillion on subsidies this year.

“The development budget stands at roughly Rp 150 trillion. Given this situation, it is hard for the government to make big investments and spend its way to higher economic growth, both of which are the basic requirements for poverty and unemployment alleviation,” Kalla said.

Source : http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailheadlines.asp?fileid=20070628.@03&irec=2

Premier Government Source Enhances Tele Atlas’ Digital Map Offering with High Quality, Complete Maps of Java and Bali Areas

Singapore, June 25, 2007 – Tele Atlas (FSE: TA6, EUNV: TA), a leading global provider of digital maps andbdynamic content for navigation and location based solutions, announced today it has signed an agreement with BAKOSURTANAL, the government institution responsible for creating and maintaining large scale geographical maps in Indonesia.

Tele Atlas plans to incorporate BAKOSURTANAL’ s digital maps within its existing Indonesia database by September 2007. The Indonesia map is part of a virtually seamless Southeast Asia map solution from Tele Atlas that includes extensive coverage of
Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

BAKOSURTANAL is the only institution designated to deliver government-approved maps of the area. The company’s maps feature 1:25,000 scale topographic data for the full Java and Bali areas and will enhance Tele Atlas’ digital map with more detailed navigable street network and extensive point of interest (POI) content for all major cities in Indonesia.

“Tele Atlas is the first company to receive a license for topographical maps from BAKOSURTANAL, whose content will further enrich navigation and location based solutions as the regional market for these products and services continues to expand,” said Tele Atlas Asia Pacific Chief Operating Officer Mark Steele. “This agreement significantly enhances our digital maps of Indonesia and builds on our lead position in the APAC region, with maps covering nine countries and territories and hundreds of millions of inhabitants.”

About Tele Atlas

Tele Atlas delivers the digital maps and dynamic content that power some of the world’s most essential navigation and location-based services (LBS).The information is the foundation for a wide range of personal and in-car navigation systems and mobile and Internet map applications that help users find the people, places, products, and services they need, wherever they are. The company also works with business partners who trust its digital map data to delivercritical applications for emergency, business, fleet, and infrastructure services. Through a combination of its own products and partnerships, Tele Atlas offers digital map coverage of more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. The company was founded in 1984 and today has approximately 2,400 full-time staff and contract cartographers at offices in 24 countries and uses a sophisticated network of
professional drivers, mobile mapping vans, and more than 50,000 data resources to deliver highly accurate and up-to-date digital maps. Tele Atlas is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (TA6) and on Euronext Amsterdam (TA). For more information, visit www.teleatlas. com.

About BAKOSURTANAL

Badan Koordinasi Survei dan Pemetaan Nasional (BAKOSURTANAL) is the National Coordinating Agency for Survey and Mapping, a non departmental government institution responsible for the creation and maintenance of high quality, large scale geographic data on a national or macro level. The institution is directly under the Indonesian president’s responsibility. For more information, visit www.bakosurtanal. go.id.