Spend early, spend often says business lobby (April 18-24)

ADB offers financing amid crisis

Apr 24, 2020

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Business and economics

Spend big, spend now
- More stimulus spending is needed quickly to stem off economic catastrophe, the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has recommended. The influential business lobby says hundreds of millions of additional dollars will be needed to cover workers incomes alone, let alone spending to strengthen both the health care and welfare systems. “The government spending and stimulus have been far too small. We don’t have much time and we can’t afford to get it wrong with this pandemic,” the Chamber’s deputy chairwoman Carmelita Hartoto told Bloomberg.

ADB boost
- The government has gotten a push from the Asian Development Bank, whose massive emergency funding will include a slice for Indonesia. The country’s been awarded $1.5 billion in financing to support spending amid the pandemic. “ADB’s budget support will help the government address the challenges posed by COVID-19, with a strong focus on the poor and vulnerable, including women,” ADB president Masatsugu Asakawa said in a statement obtained by Reuters.

Mobile battles
- Facebook is dipping its proverbial toe in Indonesia’s fierce mobile payment wars. The three major players — GoPay, OVO and LinkAja — have all been in talks with the social network giant to facilitate a roll-out, but regulatory agencies say no formal application has yet been made. Tech In Asia notes this isn’t Facebook’s first foray into the sector after a WhatsApp-based payment initiative was first floated last year.
- Elsewhere, GoPay-owner GoJek has quietly acquired Moka, a mobile POS system for a reported $130 million. Bloomberg cites sources familiar to the matter saying the acquisition occurred last month, but an official confirmation is yet to be made. Moka is Jakarta-based but operates in over 100 cities across the country in 35,000 retail and hospitality outlets.

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Indonesia’s household spending to tank as people lose jobs: Fitch (The Jakarta Post)

“We believe that private consumption will eventually collapse later this year as employment conditions continue to worsen,” Fitch wrote in a research note. “Employment conditions are currently in contractionary territory, but individuals expect the situation to remain weak over the next six months.”
The government estimates that around 2.9 million to 5.2 million workers could lose their jobs, while around 1.1 million to 3.78 million people could fall into poverty.
Fitch said the current containment measures adopted by the government would disrupt spending but would not lead to an immediate stoppage. Indonesians will ramp up purchases of foodstuffs and discretionary items ahead of the Ramadhan and Idul Fitri period that will begin this week and continue until the end of May, it added.

Politics

Activism arrest
- Leading rights groups in Jakarta yesterday swung to action after the arrest of activist Ravio Patra Wednesday evening. Ravio, who has criticized the government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis, was arrested for allegedly inciting a riot via WhatsApp — despite having reported losing access to the account before the messages were sent.
- A coalition of rights groups including free speech advocates SAFEnet, the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH Jakarta), the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS), and the Legal Aid Institute for the Press (LBH Pers) appealed directly to President Jokowi. “Stop the criminalization process and stop all acts that attempt to silence other citizens,” SAFEnet executive director Damar Juniarto said in a statement.
- Ravio has since been freed by police who say investigations will continue, but Ravio will be treated as a witness in the case with more to come.

Too slow?
- President Joko Widodo’s ban on mudik, which we discussed earlier in the week here, has been welcomed by many though some critics say an announcement should have been made sooner. Mardani Ali Sera of the opposition Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) says many mudik travellers had already left the city centres by the time the President made his decision. Irwan of the Democratic Party agreed. "Many have tested positive on other islands after visiting Jakarta. [This year’s] mudik should have been prohibited a long time ago. The President was too slow by only banning it now as the virus is already widespread," he told the Jakarta Post.

Jakarta’s budget woes
- Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan says he expects budget revenue to drop due to the pandemic with business and other economic activities slowing dramatically. Additionally, increased and unexpected spending will see the budget differ strongly from its initial plan. Speaking at a teleconference for regional development and planning yesterday he said he expected a contraction of around 53 percent in the budget.

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Arief Budiman, dissident academic under New Order, dies at 79 (The Jakarta Post)

Arief Budiman, a public intellectual who introduced leftist ideas to students and activists in the early 1990s and a leading opposition figure against the New Order regime, died on Thursday. He was 79 years old.
Arief, born Soe Hok Djin to a poor Chinese family in West Jakarta on Jan. 3, 1941, passed away at Ken Saras Hospital in Salatiga, Central Java, after a battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was survived by his wife Leila Ch. Budiman, his son and daughter and several grandchildren.
Arief's colleagues and friends shared the news of his passing on social media. Human rights activist Andreas Harsono was among the first to deliver the news on Twitter.

Will coronavirus fan the flames of Southeast Asia's haze problem? (Reuters)

“My concern is that social distancing and lockdowns may not be monitored and implemented as strictly in the rural areas,” said Helena Varkkey, a lecturer at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur.
Deploying government personnel to enforce the lockdown rules may pull them away from watching forests and farmers to prevent illegal land-clearing, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Indonesian farmers burn huge swathes of forest and peatland each year to make way for oil-palm plantations and other agricultural expansion, creating a vast haze of smoke that clouds the skies over large parts of the region.

Society and community

Long operation
- The regular security operations during mudik time will begin much earlier in Ramadan this weekend. Amid the cancellation of the event, police will be tasked with enforcing the policy rather than ensuring the safety of roads and travellers. "Operasi Ketupat will begin on the first day of Ramadan and last until seven days after Idul Fitri. We will receive assistance from the Indonesian Military throughout," National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Argo Yuwono said Tuesday.

Flat-out at the cemetery
- Jobs are becoming increasingly insecure country-wide, but for one industry there’s more work than ever. Grave-digger Minar has worked at East Jakarta’s Pondok Rangon cemetery — one of two designated COVID-19 cemeteries — and tells Channel News Asia he’s never been busier. “It is now very tiring because there are so many dead bodies arriving daily, so I feel tired from digging non-stop,” he says. His experience reflects a suspicion among public health professionals that the death toll may be higher than officially listed.

Death raises fears
- Fears that the country’s most vulnerable would suffer the quickest appear to have to come true with reports of deaths by starvation. One woman, 43-year-old Yulie Nuramelia hailing from Serang in Banten, died just a day after telling news reporters she was struggling to put food on the table. In a news broadcast, the mother of four says she had applied for assistance but had not yet received help.

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One million Indonesian migrants in Malaysia lack food under lockdown, says Nahdlatul Ulama (SCMP)

“I don’t know what I will do after that,” said Agung, who is worried about his wife, one-year-old child and elderly parents living in a village outside Medan, North Sumatra. He is their sole breadwinner.

“I have not been able to send them any money for two months. For now they have food, but I don’t know how long that is going to last,” he said.
Agung is among the more than 2.5 million low-wage Indonesian workers in Malaysia, most of whom are Muslim. They are grappling with a double whammy of financial distress ahead of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan that begins on Friday, and being told they should not return home in late May to observe Eid ul-Fitr or Hari Raya Puasa – the occasion marking the end of the fasting month.

How social scientists in Indonesia can help epidemiologists do COVID-19 contact tracing (The Conversation)

Indonesia has been slow in tracing people who have come into contact with infected people. For example, there have been two significant potential spread clusters in February: a sharia business conference and an annual Protestant Churches of Western Indonesia (GPIB) gathering, both held in Bogor, around two hours south of Jakarta.

While some of those attending these events have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and some have even died, the events remain under-investigated. The weak contact tracing might contribute to slow detection. That leads to a higher number of fatalities, as well as rapid transmission of the virus, especially in provinces with a dense population such as Jakarta, West Java and East Java.

While experts in epidemiology are leading the fight against the novel coronavirus, social science researchers can also help make sure contact tracing is carried out in all provinces in Indonesia.

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