The minister made the statement in a speech read out by West Sumatra Administration Secretary Mahmuda Rivai at a ceremony to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Regional Autonomy Day here Monday.
During its implementation over the past decade, regional autonomy had changed the implementation of regional administrations to become more dynamic, he said.
Regional economies had grown and developed progressively based on the respective regional resource potentials and local wisdom, he added.
Since the application of decentralization policy and regional autonomy as of 2000, there were three drastic principal changes, according to the minister.
Regional autonomy had improved the implementation of democratization, freedom of expression and assembly, and cut long bureaucratic processes so that public services could be delivered more efficiently and responsively.
Regional administrations can manage and exploit their economic potentials and boost their economic activities.
However, the minister believed some improvements still needed to be made in the implementation og regional autonomy.
Over the past ten years, there 205 new autonomous regions had been formed, consisting of new seven provinces, 164 districts and 34 cities.
The government was currently drawing up grand design to improve regional autonomy so that new autonomous regions could be be created with better planning and more smoothly.
The minister explained that the central government was also in the process of improving the regional head election system which had become inefficient and too costly.
In 1999. the national parliament approved two laws on decentralization. Law 22 concerns administrative decentralization, while Law 25 concerns financial administration. The first set of implementing regulations for Law 22 was published early in May 2000.
(Uu.F001/HAJM)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
