WHEN it was overwhelmed by the economic crisis in mid-1997, Indonesia’s foreign loans were still US$53.87 billion. Seven years on, that figure has climbed by more than 50 percent to US$82.11 billion. A question then arises of the government’s earnestness in reducing the foreign debt burden.

Economist Dradjad Wibowo, for instance, openly accuses the government of not being serious. “Instead of going down, our foreign debt contin