Bank restructuring and financial institution reform in Indonesia

The banking sector underwent drastic reform in post-crisis Indonesia. Bank restructuring, driven by IMF conditionalities, resulted in the exit of insolvent banks and ownership changes of major private banks. Through recapitalization and sales of government-held shares, foreign-owned banks emerged as leading actors in the place of business-group-affiliated banks. As part of the restructuring process, an exit rule was created. The central bank, which up to that time had been given only partial authority under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Finance, now gained a full range of authority over banks. The central bank's supervision system on banks, risk management systems at individual banks, and their efforts to build risk management capacities, began to function. This is totally different from the old financial institution under the Soeharto regime, where banks had no incentive to control risks, as the regime tacitly ensured their survival.

Post-decentralization regional economies and actors -- putting the capacity of Local governments to the test

Decentralization in Indonesia was introduced institutionally in 2001, with a democratization drive promoted by international donors and by the intention of the new government to clear away the centralistic image of Soeharto. Decentralization has had some effects on regional economies and on local government administration. Compared to the period before decentralization, the share of gross regional domestic product and local government finance has increased in Java, though investment and bank borrowing have expanded to the outer islands. In qualitative aspects, decentralization has transferred not only administrative authority but also many new vested interests from the center to regions. Local governments have become more extensive economic actors in regional economies. Regional economic actors now compete actively for such vested interests and have missed the opportunity to create market-friendly regional economies. The government sector should not be a mere rent-seeking economic actor, but should play a role as a facilitator promoting private sector activities in regional economies.

Forestry Sector Reform and Distributional Change of Natural Resource Rent in Indonesia

After the collapse of the centralized Soeharto regime, deforestation caused by over-logging accelerated. To tackle this problem, an IMF/World Bank-led forestry sector reform program adopted a market-friendly approach involving the resumption of round wood exports and raising of the resource rent fee, with the aim to stop rent accumulation by plywood companies, which had enjoyed a supply of round wood at privileged prices. The Indonesian government, for its part, decentralized the forest concession management system to provide incentives for local governments and communities to carry out sustainable forest management. However, neither policy reform worked effectively. The round wood export ban was reimposed and the forest management system centralized again with cooperation from a newly funded industry-led institution. In the midst of the confusion surrounding the policy reversal, the gap between the price of round wood in international and domestic markets failed to contract, although rent allocations to plywood industries were reduced during 1998-2003. The rents were not collected properly by the government, but accumulated unexpectedly in the hands of players in the black market for round wood.

Is It Worthwhile for Indonesia to Rush into a Free Trade Deal with Japan?

This report represents a preliminary attempt to refine some basic ideas on the potential impact Indonesia might experience from a free trade arrangement with Japan, using a forward-looking, multi-regional, multi-sectoral applied general equilibrium model of global trade to capture growth effects through capital accumulation paying attention to the changes in the patterns of interregional capital flows that might happen even before the policy change occurs. The simulation results revealed that the welfare gains of rushing into trade liberalization with Japan are not so large. This makes out that taking time over negotiations might be the best choice for Indonesia if the government places priority on convincing the Indonesian people that a free trade deal with Japan will definitely bring positive effects, while proceeding rapidly might be the answer if the country is serious about recovering the welfare levels that might be lowered by free trade arrangements among Malaysia, the Philippines, and Japan.

Bank Borrowing and Financing of Medium-sized Firms in Indonesia

The improvement of financial intermediation functions is crucial for a robust banking system. When lending, banks have to cope with such problems as information asymmetry and adverse selection. In order to mitigate these problems, banks have to product information and improve their techniques of lending. During the 1998 financial crisis, Indonesia's banking system suffered severe damage and revealed that the country's banking intermediation functions did not work well. This paper examines the financial intermediation functions of banks in Indonesia and analyzes the importance of bank lending to firms. The focus is on medium-sized firms, and "relationship lending", one of the bank lending techniques, is used to examine financial intermediation in Indonesia. The results of logit regressions show that the relationship between a bank and a firm affects the probability of bank lending. The amount of borrowing and collateral are also affected by a firm's relationship with a bank. When viewed from the standpoint of relationship lending to medium-sized firms, Indonesian banks cannot be criticized for any malfunction of financial intermediation.

Corporate Governance in Indonesia: A Study on Governance of Business Groups

This study deals with the issue of corporate governance in the case of Indonesian business groups. It examines what factors can be attributed to failures of corporate governance. Through case studies of six different types of business groups, it evidences that self-governance by owner-managers can function well if there is no other key stakeholder and no collusion with the government. When this is not the case, however, self-governance does not work, and governance by creditors or professional managers over owner-managers has limitations. For better corporate governance, there is a need not only for building internal governance mechanism of business groups, but also for strengthening external monitoring institutions including creditors, capital markets, the governmental as well as non-governmental systems.