The Fight for License to Squeeze

In early 1990s, Indonesia's investment coordinating board (BKPM) offered a program called One Stop Service to shorten lengthy bureaucrazy in processing business licenses. The idea was to make everything easy for investor when they want to start business here.

Bold idea actually. Imagine that as an investor you have to deal with hundreds of government institutions right from the cabinet to a village chief (kepala desa) before you could really put in the money. And along the way, most of the time, you have to spend huge amount of money to get these licenses. Land and building construction license, license to employ expatriates, to tap underground water, electricity, telephone line, noise license, etc. The One Stop Service was a mere dream. None of these various institutions want to give away their authority to give licenses because that's the main source of income for the low-paid state officers.
People thougt political reform could change that. In fact, after the downfall of Soeharto, the idea of One Stop Service for investors at BPKM have been repeatedly discussed. But Big Zero!
That's also the case with the management of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Soeharto gave authority to different ministries depend on what business the SOE involved in. So all the state-owned plantation companies were under the ministry of agriculture, telcos under the transportation and telecommunication ministry, and so forth.
But then Habibie established a new ministry of SOE to manage all these SOEs.
To be continued...

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