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Indonesia Expects Global Support Funds from G20

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Indonesia needs global support fund to revive its economy and to become one of the world's growth engines, like other developing markets. Therefore it expects to gain loans at the G20 summit which will be held in London starting April 2, 2009, according to Indonesia's economists.

"In short, Indonesia needs loans," Aviliani, an economist at the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF), stressed during an exclusive interview with the Xinhua reporter on Tuesday.

The expert said that amid the current crisis, Indonesia needs fund badly to reduce the high unemployment and help the failing enterprises. So, the country should use the moment of the G20 meeting to ask for the fund.

The chairman of the Indonesian Employers Association Sofyan Wanandi said the summit should result in ways to disburse loans to Indonesian private industries or to the government's budget which in turn will boost the economic activities. With the money, companies and the government could create more jobs.

Meanwhile, private companies also need to roll over theirs debt due to the prolonging financial crisis.

Earlier, Indonesia's Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said that Indonesia will propose talks on private companies' debt rollover in the summit. The minister said that the risk faced by private sectors in emerging markets, including Indonesia, was due to inability of European and American banks in disbursing loans. Private sectors need new loans to repay older debt, but they can not get these loans now because the American and European banks are facing a financial crisis.

On the other hand, Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said that Indonesia would again propose the global expenditure fund scheme, which it once introduced at the Washington summit. He said the global expenditure fund would allow all countries access to it to revive their real economic sectors.

"We will struggle to get the concept adopted as a joint effort of international community to tackle the crisis," Hassan has said.

But a former official in the era of President Soeharto and President BJ Habibie totally disagreed if the Indonesian government asked for other loans at the G20 forum. Former Finance Minister Fuad Bawazier said the Indonesian government should stop borrowing from overseas. Like other contra-government economists, Fuad said that the more Indonesia is indebted to overseas, the more burden the country has to bear.

"The country should maximize its potency to survive," he said. That's why Fuad also opposed the government's intention to seek the private sector's debt rollover at the G20 summit.

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