Plausible Futures for Economic Development and Structural Adjustment – Impacts and Policy Implications for Indonesia and Australia

With a goal of improving the capacity of Indonesian policymakers and processes, the project reviewed the role of agricultural sectors in rural development and the overall economy and identified policies that can impact positively upon incomes, poverty and hunger in the longer-term. The project, co-designed and co-implemented with several Indonesian and Australian partner agencies, also provided an enhanced set of knowledge and decision support tools that were intended to help Indonesian policymakers to look to future challenges posed by global environmental and economic change and to identify areas in need of alternative policy options.

Outcomes

• One Indonesian partner organization, the Indonesian Center for Agriculture Socio Economics and Policy Studies (ICASEPS), used the modeling tool developed during the project for new in-house climate change research, titled “Dampak Makro Perubahan Iklim pada Subsektor Pangan” or “Overall Impact of Climate Change on Food Subsector.”
• Partner Agency for Trade Research and Development (TREDA), Ministry of Trade (MoT) developed a Policy on the Beef Reference Price using insights from a paper co-written with Australian partners under this project. A further paper produced under the project--, Regional rice stocks, prices and food security: Implications for Indonesia--was used by the WTO negotiator for Indonesia in Bali in 2013 during negotiations on public stockholding.
• In 2013 and 2014, China was proposing extending ACFTA to ASEAN, and reviewing the implementation of ACFTA. TREDA used some of the recommendations, developed together with Australian partners under this project, as a position for discussion with China.
• Based on IFPRI’s training of partial equilibrium agricultural sector modeling, TREDA has built an Indonesian trade policy model. The model is used to assess development plans in cooperation with the National Development Planning Agency, Republic of Indonesia (BAPPENAS) to estimate trade targets for 2015-2019.