Opening Remarks at The Presidential Lecture `We Can Put Poverty into Museums` by Professor Muhammad Yunus

TRANSCRIPT
OPENING REMARKS
DR. SUSILO BAMBANG YUDHOYONO
PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA
AT
THE PRESIDENTIAL LECTURE
“WE CAN PUT POVERTY INTO MUSEUMS”
BY PROFESSOR MUHAMMAD YUNUS
STATE PALACE, 7 AUGUST 2007



Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,
Assalaamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh

Vice President, Yusuf Kalla,
Professor Muhammad Yunus,
Ministers,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am very happy that you, Professor Yunus, are able to fulfill my invitation to come to Indonesia. Rest assured that you are among welcoming friends. You also have many admirers, at the monumental work of Grameen Bank is well known in Indonesia. I hope that you will enjoy our hospitality and feel at home during your stay here.


I would also like to express my congratulations on winning last year’s Nobel Peace Prize. You certainly deserved it, Professor.

The Nobel Prize you won serves to reaffirm the longstanding belief that we cannot achieve peace, stability, and political development unless we successfully attack the problem of poverty, empower people at the grassroots level, and most importantly empower: the mothers of our future generation.

I think the Nobel committee could not have selected a more important matter of interest and concern.

The world leaders who gathered at the Millennium Summit in September 2000 signed the Millennium Declaration agreeing on a set of development goals. The Declaration brought a set of interconnected development goals into a global agenda, called the Millennium Development Goals.

As one of the signatories of this Declaration, the Government of Indonesia has an obligation to take the necessary actions to realize these goals.

On this occasion, I would like to share with you Indonesia’s effort in broadening the access of low income enterprises and household to finance, and to outline the country’s progress in facing the challenges of reducing employment and poverty.

In improving access of low income enterprises and households to finance, we have achieved important success stories with Bank Rakyat Indonesia-Rural Unit (BRI-Unit Desa). However, we still face challenges in the millions of Indonesia’s micro small and medium enterprises who still don’t have credit access to formal institutions.

Why I access to finance so important for the poor? I share your view, Professor Yunus, on the importance of access to finance for small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME’s) and the poor. Access to finance (or credit) is the key for prosperity or poverty.

There is a very close link between improved access to finance and reduction in poverty. While investors put policy and legal certainties as the main factor for investing in Indonesia, the majority of our SME’s regard access to finance as the main problem for them.

This is why the government of Indonesia put such strategic importance on an SME’s Empowerment Policy to promote growth and employment, and reduce poverty.

The SME’s Empowerment Policy that we are undertaking covers four major aspects namely:
(i) Enhancement of SME’s access to financing sources,
(ii) Development of Entrepreneurship and Human Resources,
(iii) Enlargement of the market for SME’s products, and
(iv) Regulatory Reform.

It is expected that the funds available in the banking sector, the government budget, the State Owned Enterprises, as well as the public, can be utilized in a more optimal way to support SME’s.

It is also expected that SME’s entrepreneurship will be able to develop in a more professional way by better utilizing innovation and technology, so they can be more competitive in the global marketplace.

We clearly understand that the most important factor to empower SME’s and reduce poverty in a sustainable manner is by accelerating economic development.

In this regard I am happy to inform Professor Yunus that Indonesia’s economy is healthy: our GDP grew by 6 percent at the beginning of this year, and we hope to achieve a 6.3 percent growth rate by the end of this year.

However, we do not plan to remain complacent on that level. The Government has targeted growth to accelerate further, reaching close to 7 percent next year, based on the premise that accelerating real sector growth will increase the economy’s labor absorptive capacity further.

As a result of the accelerating growth to date, we have seen a reduction in open unemployment of 550 thousand people between February 2006 and February 2007.

At the same time, we are aiming to tackle the challenge of an open unemployment rate of 9.75 percent, or 10.5 million unemployed people.

Similar progress and challenges are also evident when the poverty reduction situation is considered. The number of poor in March 2007 decreased by 2.13 million compared to the same month last year, putting it very much at pre-crisis level.

But we remain conscious to the task of alleviating the remaining 37.2 million poor people from poverty.

Finally, the Government of Indonesia is committed to accelerate poverty reduction by aiming to widen Community Driven Development programs, increase access of the poor to basic services – especially in disadvantaged and isolated regions -, safeguard the stability of basic commodities, and build a social protection system for the poor.

It is true that different countries have different approaches to tackling poverty. I believe it is best to learn from each other: learn from each others successes and mistakes, and learn from best practices.

I am therefore very happy that you are here with us now to share your key strengths, Professor Yunus. And your strength is that you are not just a conceptor, but you are an innovator and practitioner with a compassion for others.

I would like to invite Professor Yunus to share with us as well as enlighten us on how we can further improve our efforts to eradicate Poverty, in our ultimate goal for peace.

I thank you.
Wassalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.

Before proceeding to the next session on behalf of the Indonesian government and people, I would like to convey my addiction for brothers and sisters in Bangladesh to now suffered from big flood that happen in your country. I believe very strongly that your government together will be able to overcome that kind of disaster. We are also facing the same situation in Indonesia.


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Bureau for Press and Media Affairs
Presidential Household