Comment on “Improving Connectivity in Indonesia: The Challenges of Better Infrastructure, Better Regulations, and Better Coordination”

• Date: 01 July 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12139
• Published date: 01 July 2016
• Author: Muhammad Chatib Basri

Comment on “Improving Connectivity in

Indonesia: The Challenges of Better

Infrastructure, Better Regulations, and Better

Coordination”

Muhammad Chatib BASRI†

Harvard KennedySchool and Universityof Indonesia

JEL codes: F6, H4, H5, I9, O2, R4

Sandee (2016) writes a very interesting and valuable reading on connectivity in Indonesia.

Sandee’s paper is very timely and topical. In particular, his paper elucidates the main

challenges on connectivity in Indonesia including poor quality of infrastructures,

regulations,and policy coordination. I agreewith Sandee, that many studies on connectivity

in Indonesia focus on hard infrastructure issue and neglect soft infrastructure issues

including regulations and coordination. Sandee’s paper is trying to fill the gap by

emphasizing the important role of regulations and coordination. His paper argues that to

improve connectivity in Indonesia, the Indonesian government should aim for better

infrastructure, better regulations, and better coordination. I agree very much with the

Sandee’s analyses and findings. Nevertheless in order to improve his paper and sharpen

the analysis, I have several comments on his paper.

First, what are the good comparators for Indonesia? As Sandee says, geographically

Indonesia is very different to countries like Thailand, Singapore, or Malaysia. As an

archipelagic country one can expect that by nature the logistics cost will probably much

higher than in those countries. So, what will be the good comparators for Indonesia, so

Indonesia can do a benchmarking about the progress they have made?

Second, Sandeeclearly provides very usefulpolicy recommendations for theIndonesian

government, although they are not new. I believe most of these policy recommendations

have been discussed internally in the government. The issue, in my view, is more about

implementation.If these policy recommendationscannot be implemented, then one should

look at the constraints, especially the political and institutional constraints.We understand

that in the short-run, institutions are given. Taking into account that we cannot change

institutions in the short-run, then the question should be what will be the optimal policy

options giving that constraints. In the short-run we should probably focus on the best-fit

rather than best practices, but in the long run we should aim for best practices. Thus, if

Sandee provides policy recommendations which require first rate quality of institutions, I

†Correspondence: Muhammad Chatib Basri, Ash Centre, Harvard Kennedy School andDepartment

of Economics,University of IndonesiaJI. Tengku Cik Ditiro no 37A, Jakarta10310, Indonesia.Email:

mcbasri@icloud.com

doi: 10.1111/aepr.12139 Asian EconomicPolicy Review (2016) 11, 239–240

©2016 JapanCenter for EconomicResearch 239

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