IT TAKES local governments in Indonesia an average of 75 days to repair damaged roads, and up to seven days to repair water and electricity networks. These were some findings of a survey on the performance of local administrations released by watchdog Regional Autonomy Watch (KPPOD) in June.

More important, however, was the wide variation in the service standards revealed. It took 41 weeks to repair a damaged road in Jambi (central Sumatra), but only 10 weeks in East Java. Such differences, noted KPPOD executive director P. Agung Pambudhi, “should serve as a warning that there could be a greater gap between developed districts and underdeveloped ones in future”.

Mr Pambudhi’s assessment has important implications for Jakarta’s efforts to develop provinces outside the main island of Java. Current plans call for the creation of regional growth centres across the archipelago. But there seems little point in spending the huge sums required without a corresponding emphasis on ensuring that potential investors in ancillary industries are not discouraged by the poor quality of local government.

Between August last year and this January, the KPPOD, a non-governmental organisation financed partly by the Asia Foundation, surveyed 245 cities and kabupaten (regencies) in 19 provinces. The results showed that 11 of the 20 best governed cities and regencies were located in relatively prosperous East Java. Regions in the eastern provinces of Papua and Maluku dominated the bottom 20. Jakarta was not included in the survey.

Nine parameters were used to measure the quality of governance, including infrastructure, administration of private enterprise development programmes, access to land, and the interaction between local administrations and businesses. Other issues considered were business licensing, local taxes and fees, security, the capacity and integrity of regional leaders, and local regulations.

Apart from the issue of security, which – somewhat surprisingly – was regarded as a minor problem by the more than 12,000 companies interviewed, there was very little good news.

In an attempt to bring some order to the plethora of new regulations imposed by local governments in the wake of decentralisation, the national Parliament passed a law in 2009 that detailed the types of taxes and user charges such governments can impose. Using this legislation as a yardstick, KPPOD found problems with 72 per cent of the 1,500 local regulations it analysed.

The KPPOD report also focused on poor licensing procedures. Commenting on the issue, Asia Foundation director for local governance Erman Rahman told the media earlier this month that the excessively long periods taken to obtain various business licences had made businessmen reluctant to even attempt to apply for them. Only half of the respondents in the survey, he said, claimed to hold all the essential company licences.

But the biggest hurdle to business cited by companies was infrastructure deficiencies, such as roads, street lighting and access to clean water.

For long-time Indonesia watchers, none of this was really new or unexpected. What was interesting was the survey’s focus on infrastructure maintenance and the information it provided about the extent to which the quality of governance varied across the country.

As Mr Pambudhi pointed out, the problem is not just a lack of infrastructure, “but about how you manage the infrastructure that you have”. Cities generally performed better than regencies – a point that appears to support Mr Pambudhi’s assertion that the gap between the developed and underdeveloped parts of the country is set to grow as businesses gravitate to more favourable locations.

Local governments in three provinces surveyed by the KPPOD in 2007 were included in the latest study, thus allowing for some simple trend analysis. Comparing the 2007 and 2011 data, local governments in East Java improved in the quality of governance, while their counterparts in West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara – with significantly lower gross domestic product per capita – registered declines.

Hopefully, the survey will help policymakers focus on real solutions to real problems. Publication of the results may even prompt poorly performing local governments to make improvements.

It’s not only Indonesia’s roads that need to be repaired more quickly.