Social Justice for the entire Indonesian population
Last week I overheard this conversation and although it sounded strange to me, it is commonplace in Indonesia.
I was sitting in the Starbucks coffee ‘house’ at Taman Anggrek. At the table next to me, a western guy (West European I think) was talking business with two Indonesians (Chinese). They where talking rather loud and in English, so I did not have any problem understanding them.
One of the Indonesian guys was making a proposal, and the conversation went like this:
| Indonesian guy 1: | Well, we aim for a project of at least 1 million US Dollars. If we can do that, we will be still way below the price of our competitors. Our client is bound to accept our offer. |
| European guy: | Yes, I see. |
| Indonesian guy 1: | So, how much will you charge us for doing the work? |
| European guy: | Considering it takes 17 man weeks for two developers, and the salary of one engineer is about 560 US Dollars per day… (the guy is now using his hand phone as a calculator)… Mmm… It will be about 153000 US Dollars for this project. |
| Indonesian guy 1: | OK… Let’s calculate our profit now. From the one million, we should deduct the VAT, which is 10 percent, so 1 million minus 100000 is 900000. From this we should deduct the tactical fund, which is about 20 to 25 percent. |
| European guy: | What fund? |
| Indonesian guy 1: | The tactical fund! You know? |
| European guy: | Euh… I don’t know, but I can guess. |
| For the first time the second Indonesian guy talks: | |
| Indonesian guy 2: | Yes, we have to keep everybody happy at the customer’s site. So we have to provide them some money. You know, it is called “keadilan sosial bagi seluruh rakyat indonesia” - Social Justice for the entire Indonesian population… |
The Indonesians started laughing, but the European guy did not seem to share the happy feeling.
Social Justice for the entire Indonesian population it is called, or tactical funds. If you do a big project in Indonesia, there is bound to be a big portion to be reserved for these funds. 20 to 25 percent is not much, and the bigger the projects, the more people will be wanting to profit from this social justice, making the percentage higher, and in the end, resulting in much more expensive projects. Although it is called “Social Justice for the entire Indonesian population”, I think it is only a small portion of the Indonesian population that benefits from this system.