"Several ministries and agencies are working together to form the National Task Force," Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Darmin Nasution remarked.
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia, which has been able to improve its ease of doing business index from 91 to 72, will establish task forces for ease of doing business in order to further improve its business climate.

The government is now preparing a guideline for the establishment of the task forces for the acceleration of the ease of doing business in Indonesia. The task forces will be established as a follow up to the Presidential Regulation No. 91/2017 on the Ease of Doing Business.

The task forces, which are expected to help ease the licensing process, will consist of a national task force, a leading sector task force, and a supporting task force.

"Several ministries and agencies are working together to form the National Task Force," Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Darmin Nasution remarked in Jakarta on Friday (Nov 3).

He explained that the National Task Force will be the main body, which is directly under the president, and will oversee two major institutions, namely the Leading Sector Task Force and the Supporting Task Force.

The minister revealed that the Leading Sector Task Force will supervise the investment licensing process, undertake debottlenecking issues, and report regularly to the National Task Force.

The Leading Sector Task Force consists of several ministries, such as the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry, and the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, which have the authority in business activities.

"Meanwhile, the Supporting Taskforce, such as the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, will form a task force in the ministry, whose job is to support a company that wants to standardize its name," Nasution elaborated.

In addition, the government will also establish supporting task forces at provincial and district/municipality levels, consisting of representatives of local administrations, including the Integrated One Stop Service (PTSP).

In ministries, the task forces will be led by secretary-generals, while in regional administrations, they will be led by regional secretaries. The task forces would address the sluggish pace of the licensing process in all levels of bureaucracy.

"The task force will record permit requests that have not yet finished. If there is a problem, each task force should settle it," Nasution stated.

He ensured that all these task forces would be formed quickly so that all the investment licenses could be resolved soon. "A lot of investments are actually getting approval, but not yet finished," he pointed out.

Indonesia has taken the biggest step toward ease of doing business among Asia Pacific nations since 2005, the World Bank said in its latest report on Doing Business 2018; Reforming to Create Jobs".

"Indonesia become a country doing the biggest improvement in business regulation since 2005,"Operation Analyst of the World Bank Dorina Georgieva said through a video conference in Jakarta on Wednesday (Nov 1).

Indonesia is ranked 72 among 190 economies in the ease of doing business, according to the latest World Bank annual ratings. The rank of Indonesia improved to 72 in 2017 from 91 in 2016. Ease of Doing Business in Indonesia averaged 113.10 from 2008 until 2017, reaching an all time high of 129 in 2008 and a record low of 72 in 2017

Indonesia leads followed by Cambodia, the Solomon Islands, Brunei and Malaysia. In four years Indonesia climbed in ranking from the 114th in 2014, to 109th in 2015, to the 91st in 2016, to the 72nd this year, Georgieva said.

In 2016-2017, Indonesia launched seven reforms to increase the level of ease of doing business, or the largest number of reforms made in a year. In the East Asian and Pacific region, Indonesia was second only to Brunei Darussalam and Thailand which already took eight steps of reform to ease business.

The seven reforms included lower cost of starting business, down from 19.4 percent to 10.9 percent of per capita income.

According to Rodrigo A Chaves, chief of the World Bank Representative for Indonesia, Indonesia has accelerated the pace of reforms in the past few years, and the effort has been fruitful now. "We praise the government for its determination to improve the business climate in Indonesia. Going ahead with the momentum and effort to expand the reform, involving transparency and competition, is key to further stimulate the private sector in this country," Chaves noted meanwhile.

Indonesia has made significant progress in a number of areas, which is measured by the doing business index. Indonesia has become one of the top 10 reformers in the world, by adopting 39 reform indicators of doing business for 15 years.(*)

Reporter: Andi Abdussalam
Editor: Heru Purwanto
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