Indonesia: Review of Rural Development Information: Descriptions of Australian Rural Development Projects in Indonesia

Abstract

This document was compiled for AusAID as part of the project "Indonesia: Review of Rural Development Information". The aim of the project was to collect and collate technical information from Australia's experience with rural development assistance in Indonesia and place it in the context of Indonesia's agricultural and rural development policies. The resulting document forms a reference resource which enhances AusAID's corporate memory and can be used for Australia's future rural development work in Indonesia.

Apart from a description of the projects which had a direct impact on rural development in Indonesia, the document provides the reader with the broad context in which Australia's ODA projects affecting rural development in Indonesia should be regarded. It therefore offers a very brief history of Australia's ODA program (chapter 1), an overview of the development of policies affecting rural, particularly agricultural development, and their outcomes in Indonesia (chapter 2), a survey of Australia's ODA to Indonesia (chapter 3), and a general discussion of the Australian projects as far as they impacted on rural development in Indonesia (chapter 4). All chapters make extensive use of the available literature, particularly the publications issued by AusAID and its predecessors.

The document is based on research in various libraries throughout Canberra: the library of The Australian National University, the National Library of Australia, the H.V. Evatt library at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the libraries of ACIAR and AusTrade, and particularly the AusAID library. The requirement to limit research to the material available in libraries in Canberra meant that several initial intentions could not be pursued to the full.

In particular, the goal of relating Australia's past experience with rural development projects in Indonesia to Indonesia's current agricultural and rural development policies could only be realised in part. Apart from Repelita VI and cursory documentation from websites in Indonesia, insufficient current documentation appears to be available in Canberra to assess Indonesia's current agricultural policies in any depth. Reviewing the current state of public policy making in Indonesia would be paramount, given that rural development policies have been drastically adjusted in scale and scope as a consequence of the severe erosion of public budgets caused by both the economic downturn and accelerating inflation since mid-1997.

Volume II contains two inventories of projects sponsored by the Australian government which affected rural development in Indonesia. One inventory concerns 41 projects directly supported by AusAID, the other involves 84 agricultural research projects financed through ACIAR. As far the available documentation allowed, the inventories provide the general features, and where possible the impact and innovations of the projects. However, they do not dwell very much on the details of all the technical issues involved. The project reports kept at the AusAID library provide the details which could not be summarised.