ABSTRACT
Indonesia’s rapid economic growth since the late 1960s is attributed to its outward-oriented development strategy. Although not as influential for Indonesia as for some neighbouring countries, exports from East and Southeast Asia, generally, are believed to have acted as the primary engine of economic growth. East Asia’s economic dynamism therefore contrasted with economic stagnation in many of the developing countries that opted for an inward-oriented development strategy. Until the 1990s South Asia in particular was an example of how inward-oriented development strategy led to lower levels of economic openness and, as a result of that insularity, to economic stagnation (Hossain and Rashid, 1996).
