SBY Relaxes Rules for Tenders

The Jakarta Globe, Sally Piri, January 16, 2009
 

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on a surprise inspection of a gas station in East Jakarta on Thursday. The president also announced on Thursday that he believed business people with family ties to government officials should not hesitate to take part in state tenders. (Photo: Yudhi Sukma Wijaya, JG)

 

Business people with family ties to the country’s top officials should not hesitate to take part in government tenders as long as they abide by the regulations and do not engage in price markups, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Thursday. 

“It’s not fair and we should not prevent families of top officials from entering into business as they have the right to do so,” Yudhoyono told some 300 members of the National Society for Indonesian Consultants meeting in Jakarta. 

“The important thing is not to violate the rules and there should be no conflict of interest between the projects and top officials,” he said, adding that the proposals they submitted should also be free from price markups. 

The president said that he has already ordered national audit and supervisory bodies to closely monitor the procurement process for goods and services at all government institutions, including in the regions, in the Armed Forces and the police. 

“No one is immune if they play around with the supply of goods and services, or mark up [prices],” he said. 

He said that the culture of marking up prices in government procurement tenders had become a “disease” that needed to be tackled seriously. 

“Let us battle the culture of marking up prices,” he said. 

He said that the government procurement of goods and services provided a fertile ground for corruption and he had asked all audit and supervisory bodies to thoroughly scrutinize their procedures. 

Following the government’s fight against corruption in the wake of Yudhoyono’s appointment as the country’s first directly elected president in 1999, authorities have arrested and tried many officials on charges of corruption. Corruption, including through nepotism and collusion in government tenders, had been rife during the three decades under the authoritarian President Suharto. 

“I ask that whenever state official-owned businesses enter the realm of the state and regional budgets, the process should be carefully scrutinized,” he said. 

Minister of Public Works Joko Kirmanto agreed with Yudhoyono that families of top officials should not be prevented from participating in government-related projects. 

But he said that if businesses of families of officials took part in tenders, they should be closely monitored. 

Joko said that there were not many companies with close ties to top officials that had entered tender bids within his department. 

He said that he did not want to know which companies belonged to whom. “Therefore, if you ask me who won a bidding process, I will not know, because I don’t question who owns the companies,” he said. 

Bachder Djohan, chairman for the National Society for Indonesian Consultants, said that the Presidential Decree No.80/2003 on the government procurement of goods and services should be revised, especially in regards to the disparity in billing rates for foreign and local enterprises.