Money is no obstacle to rebuilding Indonesia's tsunami-ravaged Aceh, but foreign donors want assurances that funds cannot be skimmed off by corrupt officials, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said recently. Foreign donors are waiting to pour billions of dollars into Southeast Asia's biggest economy, which after five years of reform is well placed to weather the devastation wrought by the December 26 earthquake and tsunami, ADB Vice President Joseph Eichenberger said.
"We (ADB) are open-ended on the issue of money. We don't see the constraints as a money constraint," he told Reuters in an interview.
"The outpouring of support from the international community has been serious and generous, so I don't see resources as being the constraint here. And through that lens, recovery may be quicker than we expect."
Speaking on the first day of a meeting of Indonesia's major donors and lenders in Jakarta, Eichenberger said donor countries and institutions would be making corruption a major focus.
Indonesia ranks among the world's most corrupt nations in global surveys. The governor of Aceh province, where some 115,000 people died in the quake-triggered tsunami, was suspended last year and is in jail pending the conclusion of a graft trial.
"I think we do need to be concerned about corruption. It's a challenge in the development business, and quite frankly it has been a challenge in Indonesia," Eichenberger said.
"We've been talking in very frank and pragmatic terms with the government about that and we are going to need mechanisms that ensure our own shareholders, or in the case of the bilateral donors, the taxpayers, their money goes where it's intended."
RESTORING PRIVATE ASSETS: Eichenberger said the annual meeting of the Consultative Group on Indonesia, which began on Wednesday, would likely pledge $2.6 billion to $3.0 billion in support of ongoing economic reforms, somewhat lower than the 3.4 billion Indonesian officials have said they hope for.
But he said there would be significant tsunami rehabilitation funds pledged over and above that amount.
The key challenge in post-tsunami recovery would be restoring the private assets to individuals and communities in Aceh.
"The tsunami event, as huge as it was, tragic as it was, was not an economy-wide shock as far as we can tell," he said.