Robert Go, Jakarta – Foreign donors make this a merry season for the cash-strapped Indonesian government.
The World Bank has said Indonesia needs to show only "incremental reforms" to deserve fresh aid worth US$450-US$850 million annually for the next four years.
If Indonesia fights graft, helps the poor, cuts wasteful spending, fixes its fraud-ridden banks, builds infrastructure, and cleans up its courts – all aims that effective governments should naturally take on – it gets more, up to US$1.4 billion each year.
The CGI, a lenders' group that includes the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and bilateral donors, is also set to announce more help, with foreign credit totalling up to US$3.5 billion just for next year alone. Many, however, are not happy with this process.
They said the bank and other lenders might actually be rewarding Indonesia for its snail's pace when it comes to concrete reforms.
Dr Rizal Ramli, economic czar during Abdurrahman Wahid's presidency, said: "I don't see how Indonesia deserves loans." He pointed out how few public officials here have been jailed for graft, even if local media frequently highlight corruption cases.
Despite Jakarta's pledges to enforce banking rules, two major bank-fraud cases have occurred recently. Rumours fly about another scandal involving a big bank.
All these happened despite Jakarta's injection of a staggering 600 trillion rupiah into banks, supposedly to bring them back to health and to improve how they are run.
The World Bank itself admitted some of the critics' assessments are true. Its strategy paper for Indonesia published on Wednesday highlighted "widespread concerns about governance and corruption across Indonesian society".
The report also argued the biggest risk to its success here may be that "political will [from Jakarta] to address issues of governance will not be forthcoming".
Yet the bank is bringing Indonesia back to the Suharto days, when annual loans averaged US$1.3 billion and as much as 30 per cent of aid fell victim to graft.
Critics differ on why the aid continues. Some, like Dr Rizal, say it happens because of lenders' basic raison d'etre: "Bank directors who don't lend won't advance within the bank's hierarchy." Others say donors who have billions invested cannot afford to let Indonesia fail.
There is agreement on one thing, however. When foreign donors decry lack of reform but justify additional billion-dollar loans year after year, the result is obvious.
When they offer no stick to balance an all-carrot approach, donors do little to advance reform.