Via Antara, a report that has nothing to do—yet—with H5N1: RI must brace itself for world economic recession. Excerpt:
"China and India are two increasingly important countries but the Middle East and Europe are equally important," Iwantono who is also chairman of the Indonesian Farmers Association (HKTI) and the Farmers Advocacy Center, said.
He said that the trade minister should soon formulate steps to find market breakthroughs in these potential countries.
Besides, Indonesia should not also fully depend on the global market because it could collapse any time. Exports must be balanced with domestic orientation. "Thus, efforts to strengthen the domestic market are crucial," Iwantono said.
Indonesia is different from Singapore and Taiwan whose size is much smaller and who fully depend on global markets for their exports.
"With a population of approximately 210 million, Indonesia has highly domestic market potentials. Unluckily, the people's purchasing power is low," he said.
The breakthrough that should therefore be made is to increase the people`s purchasing power, particularly that in rural areas and the agricultural sector.
The development of agricultural-based rural industries should be given priorities. The steps that could be taken immediately include that the developing industries which provide the needs of their people, downsizing the volumes of competitive imported goods (against local products such as goods from China) providing product-processing facilities and ample access to credit facilities.
Besides, the government should provide simplified licensing procedures for small-scale businesses/cooperatives, provide pro-the-poor allocation of development funds and slacken banking liquidity.
According to Iwantono, several industrial sectors such as food, food processing, fisheries and fish-processed products, animal husbandry products and their processing facilities, timber and its processing as well as plantation products should be given special attention.
It's 9 pm Sunday in Vancouver, and almost 3 pm Monday in Sydney, where the Australian stock market is down over 3 percent. So is the Nikkei index in Japan. Germany, like Ireland, is guaranteeing private depositors' money. Britain will have to do the same or see a run on its banks.
Even the rate of illegal immigration into the US has dropped sharply. Evidently it's not worth the trouble any more.
Maybe European and North American markets will rise tomorrow morning, but it seems clear that the world economy is going into a serious recession. It will hurt the developing countries at least as badly as it will hurt us.
Under those conditions, Indonesia can give its food sector all the special attention it likes. Poultry producers will sell every bird they can, whatever its health and whatever price it brings. After all, the people's purchasing power is low.
They won't alert their officials about sudden die-offs, and they probably won't report people falling ill with flu-like symptoms. They'll just eat their birds, bury their kids, and hope for the best.
Update: As of 8 a.m. PDT Monday, the Indonesian stock market is down 10.69%. Meanwhile Toronto's market fell over 1100 points in the first 90 minutes, and the Dow is down over 500.
