Bali Humanitarian Donation
TOKYO (SuratkabarCom) -
A group of Indonesia's major aid donors has estimated that up to 3 million more Indonesians will fall below the poverty line by the end of next year because of bomb attacks on the resort island of Bali on Oct. 12, a World Bank official said Friday.
''This was an attack that affects in a very direct way for Indonesians,'' World Bank Country Director for Indonesia Andrew Steer told a press conference after a one-day interim meeting of the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI).
The meeting was held to consider additional loans to help Indonesia cope with the fallout from Bali.
''Our preliminary estimation is that by the end of 2003, there could be 2-3 million more Indonesians living below the poverty line'' due to the attack, he added.
Under the current international assistance, those people should have been lifted from the poverty line, but the Bali bombing attacks may ruin that hope, he said.
Steer said donor representatives committed themselves, as friends of Indonesia, ''to prevent those people from falling below the poverty line.''
''Indonesia deserves the full support of the international community in this difficult time,'' he added.
According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, some 38 million people out Indonesia's 213 million population currently live below the poverty line and there are at least an equally large number of people without jobs.
The Indonesian definition of people living under the poverty line is those earning less than $1 a day.
A World Bank paper for the meeting said that although Bali itself will be the hardest hit by the impact of the Oct. 12 bombings, other regions, especially those with close links to Bali or which are also dependent on tourism, will also be affected through labor market and economic linkages.
''The overall importance of the tourist industry in Bali in terms of jobs and incomes is large,'' it said.
Calling Bali ''the locomotive of the Indonesian tourism,'' Coordinating Minister for the Economy Dorodjatun Kuntjoro-Djakti said what happened there will affect the whole country's tourism industry.
It will also indirectly affect business confidence that relies heavily on consumer spending for growth, Dorodjatun said.
''So now or never, it's the time to do everything possible to improve business confidence,'' Steer said.
About 30 bilateral donors and multilateral institutions attending the interim meeting discussed how they could provide specific support for Bali to mitigate the worst impacts of the bombing on the island's economy.
They underscored, however, that the main challenge will be restoring Bali's image, a task in which foreign governments could help by promoting confidence among their citizens.
A few hours before the CGI meeting, the government and the House of Representatives agreed to revise its economic growth forecast for fiscal 2003 from 5% to 4% due to the bombing attacks.
Economic analysts have said the country's economy must grow by at least 5% or 6% to effectively reduce unemployment and poverty, but economic prospects have worsened since the Bali bombings.
(Kyodo)
