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11 - Urbanization Trends in the Riau Islands Province
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- By Wilmar Salim
- Edited by Francis E. Hutchinson, Siwage Dharma Negara
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- Book:
- The Riau Islands
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 09 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 22 July 2021, pp 271-297
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
The Province of the Riau Islands (PRI) is one of the provinces in Indonesia created by Law No. 25 of 2002, and which entered into effect in 2004 (BPS Kepulauan Riau 2006). The new province was carved out of the larger Riau Province, following the decentralization reforms of 1999 that intended to bring the government closer to the people through empowering local and provincial governments (Firman 2009). The creation of PRI was one of eight such reform processes that occurred in Indonesia since the onset of Reformasi in 1998.
The separation of the Riau Islands from Riau Province was led by local elites and was motivated by a number of factors, including: long-standing identity tensions in the region; the island dwellers’ feeling of being neglected by the mainland provincial government in Pekanbaru; and the opportunity to garner greater revenues from gas fields in the Natuna Islands (Hutchinson and Chong 2016; Fitriani, Hofman and Kaiser 2005).
In the extant literature on the region's development, Riau (Islands) is known as a site of cross-border development initiated by Singapore government in the 1980s with the creation of the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle (IMS-GT), which includes Singapore, Johor in Malaysia, and Riau (abbreviated as SIJORI). The Singapore government's vision was to manage the “hinterlandization” of its economy by providing capital to its neighbours, while Johor and Riau provided land and labour (Bunnell et al. 2012).
This vision dovetailed with that of the Indonesian government, which began to develop Batam Island from the 1970s. The intention was to build Batam as a site of industrial activity to capture spill-over from Singapore. By 1991, the largest foreign direct investor in the island was Singapore—its main industries of interest being real estate, tourism, metal processing, drilling equipment and electronic component assembly (Toh and Low 1993). With a very high population growth rate from 1990 to 2000 resulting from a large influx of migrant workers from other regions in Indonesia, especially Java (Firman 2004), Batam became the Riau Islands main urban centre.
Batam is not the only site of development in the province .
9 - Infrastructure Development under the Jokowi Administration: Progress, Challenges and Policies
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- By Wilmar Salim, Chair of Graduate Study Program at the Department of Regional and City Planning, School of Architecture, Planning and Policy Development, Bandung Institute of Technology, Bandung., Siwage Dharma Negara, Senior Fellow in the Regional Economic Studies Programme and Co-coordinator of the Indonesia Studies Programme at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.
- Edited by Hal Hill, Siwage Dharma Negara
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- Book:
- The Indonesian Economy in Transition
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 16 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 06 March 2019, pp 239-265
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Summary
In many ways, the policy and management bottlenecks in the infrastructure sector are a microcosm of the problems of the overall management of government in Indonesia.
Peter McCawley (2016)INTRODUCTION
Infrastructure investment has been identified as one of the key catalysts for unlocking a country's overall economic potential, promoting growth, creating jobs and reducing poverty. Efficient infrastructure is also needed to lower distribution costs, make prices of goods and services more affordable, and improve living standards (ADB 2017). Good infrastructure brings better social and economic mobility, leading to better living conditions. For Indonesia, a country with a large population and an archipelagic territory, developing efficient infrastructure is important for ensuring sustainable and inclusive growth.
Infrastructure investments have been traditionally financed by public funds (OECD 2014). After the 1997–98 Asian Financial Crisis, Indonesia's infrastructure spending fell from around 9 per cent of GDP in the mid- 1990s to around 2 per cent in 2001 (OECD 2015). By 2014, infrastructure spending had increased to 3.6 per cent of GDP. This level, however, was relatively low compared to Asia's other high growth economies, which spent around 6 per cent of GDP on this rubric (OECD 2015). The political decision to maintain fuel subsidies in the wake of rising world oil prices had shrunk Indonesia's limited fiscal space, thus preventing the country from adequately funding infrastructure investment. As a result, Indonesia's infrastructure crumbled, leaving much of the population with insufficient access to basic facilities, including electricity, water and sanitation. Lack of quality transport and logistics infrastructure has, in turn, constrained local businesses from competing globally.
Under President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, Indonesia aims to boost its infrastructure development. Specifically, Jokowi's Nawacita (nine priority programmes) prioritizes accelerating infrastructure development to connect the peripheries with growth centres and, promoting connectivity between islands in the archipelago (KSP 2016). Moreover, President Jokowi has created the Committee for the Acceleration of Priority Infrastructure Delivery (KPPIP), a special task force that has a mandate to coordinate policies among various stakeholders and to unblock stalled national strategic projects and priority projects. Arguably, Jokowi's development strategy has narrowly focused on building infrastructure and attracting infrastructure investment to address inequality, reduce poverty and promote growth (Warburton 2016).