The Progress of Sustainable Development in Indonesia: A Comparison of Social Economic Indicators between Regions

Roberto Akyuwen

Finance Education and Training Center Yogyakarta,

Ministry of Finance Republic Indonesia, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

robertoakyuwen@yahoo.com

Abstract

Global awareness and concept on the environmental friendly development has been emerged since early 1970s. However, the progresses on its implementation were varied across countries. In Indonesia, sustainable development indicators have been studied and published by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) since 2002. Based on the recommendation of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, those indicators were classified into two groups, i.e. environment indicators and social economic indicators. This paper is aimed to compare the progress of social economic indicators among provinces in Indonesia by using descriptive approach. Observed indicators were including population, gross domestic product, unemployment, poverty, energy consumption, transportation, and agriculture. In addition, regional fiscal capacity and human development index among provinces were also analyzed. Although the fund transfer from central to local governments has increased significantly since the implementation of local autonomy and fiscal decentralization in 2001, however, in general, the improvement of social economic indicators were varied between provinces. Several provinces with high fiscal capacity were not able to improve its social economic indicators significantly. On the contrary, the other provinces with low fiscal capacity have achieved better social economic indicators. This phenomenon has proved the importance of having appropriate capability in managing local economic development.

Keywords: regional fiscal capacity, social economic indicators, sustainable development.