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1 - The Key Issues

from PART I - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2015

Hal Hill
Affiliation:
Australian National University
João M. Saldanha
Affiliation:
University of California
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Summary

This volume offers a forward-looking perspective on the economic development of East Timor. It traces the country's ‘initial conditions’, assesses and adapts the lessons of international experience, and contains detailed discussions and recommendations across a broad range of subjects. Very few countries are commencing the long march towards economic development in such an ill-prepared state. Centuries of Portuguese colonial occupation and neglect were followed by almost one-quarter of a century of troubled and sometimes brutal Indonesian rule, though with quite rapid economic development for a period. Then, in the wake of the August 1999 vote for independence, there was massive destruction on the part of the militias and departing Indonesian military. The country reverted temporarily to UN administration, with an impossibly ambitious timetable for independence.

The country's starting point could hardly be more difficult.

  1. • It is an extremely poor country, with a per capita income of about S300.1 This is broadly equivalent to the income of the poorest states of mainland Southeast Asia, and that of Portugal's former African colonies, but well below that of most small Pacific Island and Caribbean nations.

  2. • About 70 per cent of its building stock was substantially or partially destroyed in September-October 1999. In that tragic year, East Timor's GDP was estimated to have declined by about one-third.

  3. • There was massive population resettlement and dislocation in that year. At the time of writing (May 2001), about 10 per cent of the country's pre-1999 population still resides abroad, mostly in squalid refugee camps across the border in West Timor.

  4. • Much of the commercial expertise fled in 1999 and is unlikely to return.

  5. • The country lacks high-level bureaucratic capacity. During the Indonesian period, senior echelons were dominated by non-Timorese; currently, UN officials occupy most senior positions.

  6. • The country doesn't have a constitution or a legal system; land ownership disputes are rife.[…]

Type
Chapter
Information
East Timor
Development Challenges for the World's Newest Nation
, pp. 3 - 36
Publisher: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
Print publication year: 2001

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