INDONESIA: UPDATE

On April 23, 2010, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono signed a decree announcing the country's plans to implement the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). The decree appoints Indonesia's Minister of Economic Affairs to lead EITI implementation and establishes a steering committee including ministers of energy, finance and home affairs, among others. Chandra Kirana of Revenue Watch said that the government's cooperation with civil society and industry to date "strongly suggests that the new EITI multi-stakeholder team will be able to convene quickly, draft a work plan and make a successful application to the EITI international board."
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TRANSPARENCY SNAPSHOT

Since the fall of the Suharto regime, information on Indonesia's extractive industries has become increasingly decentralized and available. The country's rapid and all-encompassing decentralization process has posed a range of challenges to increased transparency, including overall limits of governance capacity and a lack of clarity regarding legal mandates. In the interim, civil society groups report extremely disparate access at the local level to information on budgets, revenues, and potential extractive industries investors.

The collection and publication of accurate and timely information remains a challenge to both civil servants and civil society. Pervasive corruption compounds the difficulty of verifying the accuracy of information once documents are obtained.
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EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES

High prices in the extractives industry are generating significant windfall revenues for Indonesia. In mining, which accounts for 0.5% of the national revenue, revenues jumped 74% between 2005 and 2006. Pertamina boasted ending 2007 with $2.5 billion USD, the highest profit ever posted by an Indonesia company.
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