What the government announced as a new package of bold measures to reinvigorate investment and empower micro and small businesses in a bid to accelerate economic growth turned out to be largely a wish list from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The reform agenda stipulated in the President's instructions to his ministers and all provincial governors is quite impressive, totaling 141 measures designed to improve the investment climate, strengthen the financial sector, accelerate infrastructure development and empower micro-, small- and medium-scale enterprises.

However, if the pace of the implementation of the three reform packages launched in the first semester of last year is any guide, we will be disappointed if we expect any significant progress in this new package.

Without a significant reform of the government bureaucratic machinery and a clear set of incentives for officials in charge of executing the reform measures, not much is likely to move because most of the actions would result in the abolition of rent-seeking opportunities for civil servants.

The President ordered his ministers, among other things, to expedite the licensing procedures for business start-up from more than 90 days now to only 25 days starting next month, to introduce an on-line investment licensing system later this year and simplify customs clearance processes to only 30 minutes for importers with good reputations and three days for other companies.

All these measures that will shave the costly and time-consuming red tape look fantastic to businesspeople.

But we don't see any new positive factors either within the government or at the House of Representatives that would drive the execution of these new measures faster than the previous packages. We haven't noticed any indications of a higher sense of urgency on the part of the government, nor the House, which is tasked with completing at least six new laws in the infrastructure sector before the end of the year.

Yet more discouraging is the absence of incentives for government officials to execute the reform measures, which in most cases will kill their rent-seeking opportunities.

The government and the House did complete in March a new investment law that was designed to give equal status to domestic and foreign investors. But to the utter disappointment of investors, the presidential decrees and other regulations needed to guide the enforcement of the law are still being prepared. Changes to the investment law would not automatically boost Indonesia's attraction as a place for investment because, as with the case of other new legislation in Indonesia, the devil usually lies in the technical details which will have yet to be stipulated in the implementing regulations.

The Indonesia-Singapore Framework Agreement on Economic Cooperation on the Riau islands to set up new Special Economic Zones (SEZs) which was launched in June, 2006, with great fan fare remains on paper because the legal foundation for the SEZ has yet to be established.

The latest reform package stipulates that the government will submit to the House a draft law on SEZ in November but without a specific deadline for its enactment.

With all these failings, we don't think the long list of all the good policy measures announced by chief economics minister Boediono Tuesday would impress anybody.

The problem is that however fast has been the pace of reform in Indonesia it has always been surpassed by most other countries in Asia. Even as the country strives to improve its investment environment, it has to contend with China, India and even Vietnam, which have been sucking investment like a giant machine.

The government says new investment should expand to over 25 percent of gross domestic product to generate an economic growth of 7 percent, the level considered adequate to significantly reduce the unemployment rate and poverty.

However, investment has remained sluggish due to an adverse business climate and the much slower-than-expected pace of reform. The latest data from the Central Statistics Agency even showed a 2.5 percent decline in investment during the first quarter of this year compared to the last quarter of last year.

It would therefore be an uphill task for the government to convince the business community of its ability to deliver on all the big promises it made in the latest reform package.