Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning
The findings of news monitoring in a number of mass media up to the beginning of August 2009 reveal that the 2008/09 global financial crisis (GFC) has had an impact on manufacturing in Indonesia, particularly on those manufacturing industries that are export-oriented and use imported raw materials.
During the first visit in September 2009, there were indications that the people most affected by the 2008/09 global financial crisis (GFC) were the Indonesian migrant workers working in the Republic of Korea (South Korea). This second visit was undertaken to confirm the findings of the first visit. The research was, therefore, focused on the migrant workers who had just returned from Korea as well as their families.
The year 2005 was designated by the United Nations as the Year of Microfinance. Microfinance is considered aan important strategy in poverty reduction and various microfinance services have been opened by government, donor institutions, NGOs and public banks. While there has been significant growth in microfinance activities, a number of issues of concern have arisen.
The government of Indonesia implemented an unconditional cash transfer (UCT) program in October 2005 in order to mitigate the impact of a removal of fuel subsidy in the same month. The program is targeted at 15 million poor households, determined by BPS (Statistics Indonesia) using a proxy means testing method.
Since the deregulation of the retail industry in 1998, the number of supermarkets, hypermarkets, and minimarkets (collectively coined “modern markets”) in Indonesia has skyrocketed. Several groups claim that the resulting intense competition with modern markets has caused the decline of the traditional market. In 2006, SMERU conducted a study on the impact of supermarkets on traditional markets in Indonesia’s urban centers.
