From
the tiger’s mouth to the crocodile’s
Mohammad Tsani Annafari, A PHD CANDIDATE AT CTH GOTHENBURG,
RECEIVED A YOUNG
SCHOLAR AWARD 2010 FROM LIRNEASIA
Sumber
: JAKARTA POST, 19 Januari 2012
Two
years ago, in a telecom workshop in Singapore, I had a conversation with a
former faculty member of Delft Technical University who at present is heading
an NGO in the field of information communication technology (ICT) development
for developing countries.
I expressed my concern about the fact that in most developing countries, the
mobile telecom sector is dominated by foreign player. In Indonesia for
instance, foreign investors are the dominant shareholders in most mobile
communication operators.
The irony is that these investors come from tiny countries such as Singapore
and Malaysia, which have small populations and therefore limited domestic
markets for mobile communications, but which have access to huge potential
markets in Indonesia.
Sadly, the government has allowed foreign investors to take advantage of this
policy for many years, all for the sake of market liberalization.
In response to my concerns, my friend wisely replied that the world is not
always fair and that this unfairness only happens if we let it happen.
He added that it is a common practice in developing countries to allow foreign
investment to boost the domestic market, although sometimes the entry of
foreign investors is also due to the collusive practices of politicians and bad
government officials.
However, after a while the government may intervene to limit the role of
foreign investors.
But he reminded me that such a situation may be considered unfair by some
investors. He further challenged me with a puzzling question: What if the
foreign investors give you and your people better services and lower prices
than domestic companies? Which one do you prefer?
For me and perhaps for most of mobile communication consumers in Indonesia, the
issue of domestic shareholders composition in mobile communication sector is
perhaps not important.
As consumers we care more about the mobile service quality, the coverage and
the price we pay as they are the most tangible aspects of our consumption.
I do not think our consumers would be happy if all mobile operators were
controlled by domestic players if it meant lower service quality and higher
prices.
From an economic point of view, domestic and foreign investors are no
different, since as business entities they are both motivated by profit.
What makes them different is how much profit they would earn from us, their
consumers, and how they do it. Theoretically, the lesser profit they want from
us, the higher the public welfare.
Sadly, in many occasions, foreign companies tend to give more to the people
than domestic investors, because mostly they are more professional, more
efficient, have more money for investment and better technology.
On the other hand, however, letting the foreign player continue dominate our
mobile communication market is also costly both politically and strategically.
For many reasons, letting too many foreign investors play in our backyard do
not look good politically, especially when public sentiments are very sensitive
on the issue of nationalism.
This issue is even more critical as mobile communications also involve a
national security dimension, whereby a stronger “domestic” control is
considered necessary.
But more than that, our market is so promising. Over 200 million users is a
huge potential market that should be optimized for our national interest. The
profit taken from local people should mostly be re-invested in the local
people’s prosperity.
And, as usual, it is more natural for our people to trust domestic players than
foreign players to look out for our national interest.
Therefore, it is not surprising that sooner or later the government will have
to limit the role of foreign investors in the mobile communication sector.
But again, we should look at the reality that as business entities, domestic
players and foreign players are naturally profit seekers. We should not let our
own nationalism blind us from the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
There are so many domestic players that actually only serve foreign interests
and act as their puppets. Some of them have frankly shown that they are willing
to give more to foreign nations than to their people.
However, the case of cell phone credit stolen by local content providers
recently also shows that domestic players may do harm to their people.
Therefore, we should be careful to make sure that the domestic privileges that
many of us are willing to give for the sake of nationalism and public interest
are placed in the right hands, and will not be misused to exploit our people.
Let’s make sure that our domestic consumers do not just go from the mouth of
tiger to the mouth of crocodile, by carefully monitoring the implementation of
the government’s telecommunications policy, and ensuring its transparency. ●
