Jakarta – The Indonesian government Tuesday announced plans to raise telephone charges as protests continued over last week's stiff increase in fuel prices. Phone charges will rise by 15 percent from the end of January, said Transportation and Communications Minister Agum Gumelar.
Gumelar, quoted by the state Antara news agency, admitted that the rise would be unpopular but said it was necessary to attract foreign investors to expand the national network.
The state telecommunications company PT Telkom was only able to install 150,000 new telephone lines last year, far from the government target of two million to three million lines by 2004.
Last week the government announced an average 22 percent rise in fuel prices in an effort to cut its huge subsidy bill, sparking several street protests.
About 200 women carrying cooking pans, ladles and other kitchenware protested in Bandung in West Java on Tuesday, saying the fuel price rise would further burden the millions of poor.
The members of the Muslim Women's Forum for the Poor said increases in fuel prices and electricity and telephone rates needed to be gradual.
Jakarta has tried to cushion the effect of the fuel rise by earmarking 2.85 trillion rupiah (273.64 million dollars) in various benefits. The oil subsidy for this year is budgeted to cost the government 30.377 trillion rupiah (2.95 billion dollars) against 53.774 trillion in 2001.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is coordinating a five-billion-dollar aid package for Indonesia, has demanded a cut in the fuel subsidies.
Some 300 members of a radical Muslim group on Tuesday staged a protest outside the US embassy against the fuel price rises.
The protesters, from the Front for the Defenders of Islam, urged the government to sever relations with the US and the IMF. "Prices soar because the government abide by the wishes of the IMF and the US," read one of their posters. Indonesia's 1997/98 financial crisis pushed millions more people into poverty, with real wages often failing to keep up with inflation since then. The central bank has forecast inflation at 9.0-10.0 percent this year.