Ulma Haryanto – The court case of Muhammad Nazaruddin and the slowly unfolding web of graft that has resulted from it have brought a specific type of corruption into focus: that involving procurements.
Court documents show that the former Democratic Party treasurer is linked to dozens of companies that participated in government project tenders.
The most recent example is the construction of the Southeast Asian Games athletes' village in South Sumatra. No Nazaruddin company participated in the tender for that project, but through his position in the government he was able to persuade the Youth and Sports Ministry to give the contract to the company of his choice.
Since the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) was established in 2002, the biggest percentage of its cases were connected to the procurement of goods and services.
By 2011 the KPK had handled 235 cases, 96 related to procurements. In that time, as many as 3,773 procurement cases had been reported to the antigraft body. It also assisted regional police and prosecutors' offices in investigating and prosecuting at least 80 cases related to procurements.
Agus Sunaryanto, head of investigations at Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), said that almost everything the government did involved a certain amount of procurement. "The government's job is to serve the public. To do that, it needs to purchase goods and services, he said on Wednesday.
"About 70 to 80 percent of the state budget is dedicated to making procurements. It is safe to assume that [those involved in corruption] will flock to where the money is."
The sensitivity and importance of procurements was the reason behind the Indonesia Strengthening Public Procurement Program (ISP3), which ran from 2007 to last year.
Funded by the Australian government through AusAid, ISP3 aimed to help the government improve the efficiency, transparency and accountability of its public procurement system.
In partnership with Indonesia's Public Procurement Agency (LKPP), which was established in 2007, the program helped develop best practices and set guidelines, said Ben Power, AusAid's head of economic governance.
According to Power, poor procurement decisions in Indonesia have cost the country $8 billion annually, making the area ripe for reform.
Together with the LKPP, AusAid came up with a nine-week procurement training module for people in both the government and the private sector. The training began in March last year, but it will take them more than a year to complete the entire module.
"It was difficult for the participants to get permission from their work to attend the training so we could only do it for one week every other month," said Dharma Nursani, director of training and competency development at the LKPP.
As many as 29 people are taking part in the program, with 15 from the LKPP and 14 from the Indonesian Procurement Experts Association (IAPI).
"Indonesia is at a point where it has started to recognize procurement as added value. At the moment it's seen as an administrative process," said trainer Robert Thompson, who is based in Britain.
According to him, better procurement management will help Indonesia's government better serve its people by cutting costs and boosting efficiency.
"Good procurement means every decision that is made has justification behind it," he said. "There's a full analysis and you're not looking purely at price, and you can justify the benefit that will come through."