TOEFL score of 600, why not ?
Indonesian trade minister, Mr. Gita Wirjawan, recently announced his plan to increase his staff English capability by imposing TOEFL score standard at 600. The question is: how to achieve that target? Some opinion leaders argued that by forcing the standard, the ministry might not have any employees or staff left, because that standard is considered as too high. I think we need to go back to the square one question of ‘what the purpose of the idea is all about?’
Indonesia as major economy participates in many global economic and political initiatives. Those initiatives range from APEC, WTO to the latest G20. In that sense, it is essential for our public officials to communicate effectively in those international forums. Language skill, in particular English, is prerequisite to communicate and cooperate effectively in those occasions. In today’s global competitive market, I found myself that, even speak fluent English is not enough. Trilingual is the new rule of the game.
I think, it absolutely reasonable for the trade minister to demand its staff to be able communicate effectively in English. In my opinion, there are at least two reasons for that. First, trade ministry staffs are our front liners in every WTO trade negotiation rounds. Imagine if they not be able to communicate effectively, the cost might be severe. Second, do compare our public servants English capability with several neighboring countries like Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia or even Japan. Some might argue that most of Japanese public officers are hardly speak English. That might be true. Come to a small town in Sapporo and asked the policeman about direction, you might not be replied in English. But, when it comes to occasion like WTO trade negotiation round, the Japanese negotiators’ English skill is spotless.
Several local media publications stated that it is too costly to train our public officials to improve their English skill, and institutional reform in trade ministry is more fundamental to just targeting its employees to score 600 on TOEFL.
That’s absolutely true. Isn’t there a way we can do both in the same time? I argue that it is possible to start reform the bureaucracy and slash the corrupted-and-inefficient practices in that ministry while improving language capability of its employees. At the end of the day, the common ultimate goal is human capacity building. We would like to have public officials who don’t mess up with our tax-Rupiah (not corrupt), as well as capable to protect and represent public interest in both domestic and international occasions.
In-house English training is just the beginning in the whole process of improving Indonesia’s public servants capabilities. Moving forward, public institutions throughout the archipelago need to be able to attract Indonesian best and brightest talent to work for them. They can only attract Indonesia best talents by reforming and transforming themselves to become a place where brightest talents would like to work for. They need to clean-up themselves and promote the opportunity to serve Indonesian citizens better. They have to offer clear and appealing career development for its prospective employees in the future.
For the moment being, why not we support Mr. Wirjawan initiatives. If you are able to comprehend this article, I must assume that you have sufficient English skill with TOEFL score most probably above 500. Ask yourself, would you like to join and work for Indonesian Ministry of Trade? If yes, then it is good for you and for the ministry. Because personally, I would probably answer, “not quite yet.”
What Europe do differently compared to Asia
Might this be the time for Europeans to take their pain, like the Asians did in 1998 ?
The fever of “austerity package” given to Greece is not even over in Europe by the time an Italian newspaper reported that the IMF preparing 600 billion Euro loan for Italy on Sunday. If that’s true, probably we might expect to see more bailouts coming in the Eurozone. The list of ailing nations in Europe is not over yet after Greece and Italy. There are, still, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and may be more nations on the list.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the story is not much different. Today, United States is the most indebted nation in our history. The ratio of debt over GDP in many developed countries is signaling a serious concern over their economies. Given the current economic situation in ‘advanced’ western countries, in line with what Jim Rogers said, I think Europe need to reboot their economy.
While the discussion over effectiveness of the bailouts still ongoing, let’s see what happened in Asia during the 1998 financial crisis. During the crisis, most of Asian countries’ currency was depreciated dramatically. The Thai’s Bath lost half of its value against US Dollar during May 1997 and their stock market was down by 75%. By November 1997, Indonesian Rupiah was down significantly, causing the nation’s public debt reached USD 60 billion. In 1998, Indonesian economy was contracted by 13.7% and inflation soared to the level of 77% in the same year.
Although most of the Asian countries, including Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea, were finally “assisted” by the IMF to tackle the crisis, they didn’t do massive bail outs like their European and American counterparts did recently. That might happened maybe because during that troubling time, most of the Asian countries seems to have no option other than let their ‘zombie’ companies and non-performing bank to go bankrupt. Therefore, that’s basically what they did.
In the aftermath of the crisis, the economy of those ailing nations during the 1998 financial crisis is healthier than ever. They applied tighter fiscal and monetary policies afterwards, and did their economic restructuring quite well. The restructuring was painful, of course. But they took their pain to have a more “make-sense economy ” in the future. Today, Asian economy is still of their growth trajectory. Although still be effected by the 2008 global financial crisis, they still managed to have sound macroeconomic indicators compared to what they’ve got in 1998.
I’m not sure about the magnitude difference between European economy today and Asian economy in 1998. Thus, the effect of letting nations to go bankrupt in Europe might also be different. But in one way or another, I believe that Europe should reboot their economy. Might this be the time for Europeans to take their pain, like the Asians did in 1998 ?
Europeans need to keep spending to keep the economy going
While the gloomy European economic situation is still far from over, in the grassroots level, its people contribute to the recovery by keep spending.
There’s no need for me to discuss about the economic recovery plan proposed by the EU and its member states’ head of government in these recent weeks. There are plenty articles and book chapters which discuss that topic already. While those plans include a broad range of economic tools to improve the economy and relatively complex in nature to grasp, I will discuss what it’s like to keep the economy going in ordinary people-level.
This week, Italy pays its highest cost of borrowing since they entered the Euro-era. A peak of 8.13 per cent was reached on Italian three-year bonds. Investors demanded a yield of 7.81 per cent for the two-year bond, up from 4.63 per cent last month. Investors already anticipate the possible bail out of Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal in the last 18-months. Bottom line is, European financial sector was never been in a pleasant situation in the last two years.
On the other hand, consumers keep watching television and reading their newspaper everyday informing them about the possible bad economic situation. Consumers’ confidence was dropped because of that and they end up tighten up their spending. Such phenomenon is relatively more common in Europe compared to what happens in many developing countries. For instance, amid the 2008 global financial crisis, consumers in Indonesia was seems to have little worries about what happened and kept spend their money on their daily needs like food, mobile-phone vouchers and so on. For most low and middle-income people in Indonesia, they simply never hold back their routine spending, thus make the economy keep going.
By the time European consumers slow down their spending over their worries about the future economic outlook, the retails sector is definitely having a bad time. They can sell their products and the cost of inventory was increased, end up earning less profits or even booking a loss. If the situation keeps going for three or four years, it is logical for retail companies to slash capacity, which often translate into jobs cuts. In that sense, the implication of spending less in general is quite big to the economy as a whole.
Although the different composition of consumption towards GDP and tax rates between Indonesia and most of the developed EU countries, there is a message we might infer. Consumers’ confidence is important in any economy. In current economic situation in Europe, governments face difficult time to boost that confidence. In that sense, consumers need to restore their own confidence. It is true that we need to be conscious about the future economic outlook, but spending to little also hurt the economy.
European consumers need to keep spending on their local area and buying more local products. They need to keep coming to the local restaurants and keep visiting their local café and pubs. Mommies and daddies still need to buy their bottles of wine, while the young lads might keep going with their beer consumption in the local pubs. Instead of travel to exotic Islands in far-east Asia, probably they can try to visit more places in their own countries, where they never visited before.
My point is, to be able to have a sound economic recovery in Europe, consumers’ confidence need to be restored. A more sensible regulations need to be made in financial sector and the reform need to keep going. Government needs to pay equal attention to both financial and real sector. Given all the flaws and foolishness in the financial sector, there is no time more appropriate to stimulate our real sector’s growth than today.
