KADIN'S VIEW OF INDONESIAN BUSINESS CLIMATE "TERRIFYING": PRES.

JAKARTA, March 31 Asia Pulse - President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said comments on the business climate in Indonesia made by the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) sounded "quite terrifying" but the government would take them as a spur to improve the situation.

The comments were made by Kadin chairman MS Hidayat in his address at the opening of a Kadin national leadership meeting here on Monday, attended by the president.

The president said Kadin's evaluation of the prevailing business climate sounded as if the government had made big mistakes.

"Kadin's analysis is quite terrifying because it makes it appear as if everything the government has done, from A to Z, was wrong," Yudhoyono said.

Hidayat said in his address that businessmen were now bearing the burden of a high-cost economy as a result of a complicated bureaucracy, corruption and lack of transparency in the ways the government was serving the public.

Such a situation, according to Kadin, had caused businessmen to bear a heavy burden and economic development to proceed at snail's pace.

In its recommendation to improve the conditions, Kadin asked the government to set up effective and transparent state institutions to support economic development.