Regional Capacity Building:
Indonesian Masters Program in Applied Economics

The significant increase in local government responsibilities associated with the ongoing fiscal decentralization reforms in Indonesia requires a major upgrading in the skills for many government official and policy experts. Particularly, capacity building is needed for local government officials, local legislators, local administrators and local policy experts as the local government level will be given significantly greater discretion in administering government programs. To go forward with effective decentralization and sustainable economic policies, it is imperative that the Government of Indonesia continue to emphasize a major education and training program that will further enhance the policy analysis skills of government officials at all levels of government, researchers in think tanks, parliamentary staff, NGO leaders, and university professors.

The USAID-funded Indonesian Masters Program in Applied Economics at the Andrew Young School contributes to this goal by training cohorts of Indonesian economists in economic policy analysis. The capacity building program is targeted at Indonesian universities and government instutions by providing graduate training in economics for university lecturers and civil servants. The first year of program (Class of 2002) has recently been completed, and the first group of thirty-one Indonesian policy analysts has returned to Indonesia.(Graduation pictures) In addition, four students from the first cohort have been invited to stay at the Andrew Young School to complete a doctorate in Economics before returning to Indonesia. The second year of the capacity building program has recently started with the arrival of twenty new masters students (Class of 2003). Since many of the participants are lecturers with universities in Indonesia's outlying regions, the Andrew Young School also works with the home institutions to build the institutional capacities of the Indonesian partner universities. Since 2001, senior Indonesian policy expert Professor Sri Mulyani has been serving as a Visiting Professor at the Andrew Young School in support of the program.

The program provides four semesters of academic training (resulting in a Masters Degree in Economics from Georgia State University), supplemented by workshops, conferences, extracurricular activities and internships designed specifically for the Indonesian students. While the students are fully integrated into the regular graduate program at GSU, additional course content was specifically developed to address key issues prominent in Indonesian economic development. A two-month training course at the University of Asia and the Pacific in Manila prepares the Indonesian students for the rigorous graduate program in the U.S.

It is expected that these students will return to universities, government, economic think tanks, and parliamentary staff, and will thereby contribute in important ways to economic decisions that will enhance the performance of the Indonesian economy. This second year extension of the program will contribute significantly to the creation of a critical mass of well-trained Indonesians who come from different areas of the country but who share identical analytical backgrounds and close personal experiences. Common bonds and ways of thinking will help in the future to bring together to the table of dialogue and compromise otherwise potential foes with conflicting interests and agendas from different provinces in Indonesia.