ABSTRACT
Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago with 736 thousand square miles and over 18 thousand islands. It is endowed with abundant natural resources, especially exportable raw materials vitally needed by the developed industrial countries. Indonesia's multiethnic population is unevenly distributed among the many islands of the archipelago, with the majority living in densely settled Java and Bali. The government's efforts to transfer tire population from overcrowded Java to Sumatra and other potentially rich areas and to develop the many vital resources of those islands may be retarded by infrastructural deficiencies. Since 1966, one of the major economic policies of the government has been to attract foreign private investments. Foreign investments have been instrumental in the development of the natural resources and export-oriented and domestic industries. The development strategies promoted by Western-trained Indonesian economist-technocrats have emphasized economic growth, but until recently ignored uneven distribution of income.
