Smooth Sailing

State firms earned $13 billion in new investments during the Meetings.

- Taufik Darusman

Last month’s week-long International Mon-etary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Annual Meetings 2018 in Nusa Dua, Bali, ended with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim praising Indonesia’s role as host. “For a country to be able to maintain such strong response to disaster and to hold an event like this, is truly remarkable,” the Harvard-trained scholar said.

The Meetings also cemented Indonesia’s growing reputation as a world-class organizer as they were held while the country was grappling with disasters in Poso and Donggala, Central Sulawesi, and in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, and at the same time hosting the 2018 Asian Para Games in Jakarta.

Indeed, the Meetings in Bali were smooth sailing all the way with no apparent glitches usually associated with such a large undertaking. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati gave the Meetings a touch of romanticism as she remarked that “as winter is coming to the U.S., Europe, Japan and China, we wanted to give delegates the warmth, love and affection of Bali.”

The chairman of the national committee tasked to organize the Meetings, who is also Coordinating Minister of Maritime, Luhut B. Panjaitan, perhaps summed it all up when he said: “We have been getting only good comments from those who were present in Bali.”

Politically, the Meetings also served to blunt detractors’ argument that it was a good example of wasting taxpayer’s money. In any case, Luhut pointed out, only Rp 556 billion were really spent from the budgeted Rp 855 billion. This includes the expansion of Ngurah Rai International Airport, a new underpass and a waste processing facility. “Some of delegates have been in Bali before many years ago and now noticed the new airport and toll road. This means that this country delivers in terms of infrastructure development,” Mulyani said.