Economic Intelligence

We (as Indonesian) must recognize the importance of economic intelligence for safeguarding our national security. I am 100% sure that our economic intelligence division is among the weakest in the world. Since our national independence in 1945, the (intelligence) community had experts looking at everything from the stability of major foreign currencies to the protection of our natural resources. However, the system was corrupted and never worked as it should be. We left everything for the shake of our individual needs and we lost our pride because we let Indonesia failed economically. Although we had and continue to have recognized authorities on balance of payments of foreign countries, advanced technology developments, the inner workings of regional economic groupings and many other economic issues, we forget about the one of the most important thing to eliminate: corruptions.

We have great partners within the Ministry of Finance; together we support our national policy-makers in the executive and later legislative branches (after 1998) as they set this country's economic policy course. Our second general economic intelligence task of the community is also to monitor trends in technology that could affect national security. Finally we undertake such counter-intelligence measures as may be very important to protect our economy from those who try to weaken our economy intentionally.

But, what happen during Old Order and New Order era, we just slept and dreamed of a nice comfortable life by letting the creation of accumulation corruption washed our consciousness.

Now, there are many institutions that closely linked to economic intelligence. Inside Departemen Keuangan there are Direktorat Jenderal Pajak, Direktorat Jenderal Bea dan Cukai, Badan Pengawas Pasar Modal, and Badan Pengkajian Ekonomi, Keuangan, dan Kerjasama Internasional, we also have Badan Pemeriksa Keuangan (BPK) in the level of lembaga tinggi negara, then we have Badan Akuntansi Keuangan Negara (BAKUN) which was born from Departemen Keuangan because it was a continuation of Direktorat Tata Usaha Keuangan Negara.

In the spirit of fighting corruption we have Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK) and Tim Koordinasi Pemberantasan Tindak Pidana Korupsi (Timtas Tipikor). To support a fair competition among business people we create Komisi Pengawas Persaingan Usaha (KPPU). To attract foreign and domestic investor we formed Badan Koordinasi Penanaman Modal (BKPM). Not to forget the role of the Ministry of Trade and the Ministry of Industry and also the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. What about economic think tank and the NGOs in economy?

I am overwhelmed with the list because there are so many institutions that should be linked with the work of economic intelligence.

Intelligence community nowadays almost forgets that economy can not be separated from intelligence. We must realize and start again a process of creating a strong economic intelligence division in order to protect our national economy from falling again.