Agreement and Controversies in Western Fund Aid
People in our country have been debating on the western fund aid especially from IMF and World Bank; those two financial aid institutions which are officially in New York brought many controversies in the country. Many experts in our country are also debating on this; the majority said “no” for this aid; but some say half “yes” for this thing. Western fund aid really brought a lot of changes in our country; since the reign of Suharto until Megawati. The country seemed to be able to allocate the budgets in all sectors and seemed not to be having a lot of problems with the fund aid. The problems occurred from inside the country. When Indonesia got the money; the money never got into the place where it should be unless it passed through long tiring bureaucracy so the budgets were cut in every sector by the “government agencies”. Thus the problems were not occurring from the Western Fund Aid; but it came out from the bureaucracy, so the government’s responsibility is to take care of its bureaucracy and let the western fund it in. Accepting aid means fulfilling the need of Indonesia and here are three reasons why we should take the aid; developing economy, advancing education sectors and maintaining military armament.
The reason why I put economic development to be the first reason is because economy has always been the base of a country. Economic sector is the most important thing in each nation nowadays; some countries are not hesitating to invade another countries in order to gain more economic interests. In the fact that every sector in a country, such as; education and military can’t operate without budget (economy).
Looking deeper into our economic problems is mostly based on budgeting problems. Indonesia has massive human and natural resources all over the country; but this country is not able to exploit the potentials due to the lack of budgets especially after crisis in 1997. Thus western aid can help this country in long and shot terms to make this country in to a better place for its citizens.
The second most crucial thing in our country is education which needs a lot of budgets and so far this country has never been having budget on time to cover all the needs in educational institutions. Due to its massive roles in our country and the lack of resources to fulfill its needs, our western aid would be the best way to solve the problems temporarily until our economy is strong enough to uphold all of its burdens.
Finally, maintaining military armament in our country has also been problems since the fall of Suharto. People would say that Indonesia is ridiculous, how come a country in the same size with US mainland has only several unarmed vessels and planes.
The core problems is with the high maintenance cost and our budget is not adequate to support this far. Using western aid is going to be very good solution for short term until this country is done with the recovery after 97 crisis.
In conclusion, taking the load from western countries is not bad and can give more benefits than the loss. To run the country after crisis and to recover its condition needs massive amount of budget; there is no other way for this country to recover without help from western loans.
Although this country really needs western loan, this country also has to be careful not to be addicted and be wiser in using the budget. Another most important thing that this country must remember is that as soon as this country has done with economic crisis impacts and recovered from it, this country has to get rid of this load because there would be no longer a reason to owe money after crisis recovery.
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