Bob Hasan, the Rise of Apkindo, and the Shifting Dynamics of Control in Indonesia's Timber Sector

Abstract

In his struggle with the International Monetary Fund over the past several months, President Soeharto has offered few assurances that he is prepared to change the basic political-economic structures through which he has channeled enormous profits to members of his own family and a small circle of cronies over the last three decades. One of the clearest signals that he means for business to continue as usual in Indonesia came with the appointment in March of his long-time business partner Mohamad Hasan to serve as Minister of Industry and Trade. For observers of the nation's timber sector, Bob Hasan's appointment as Trade Minister represents little more than the formalization of a role that he has played in Indonesia's plywood industry for the past fifteen years. When the New Order state banned the export of raw logs in the early 1980s to generate investment in wood processing, Hasan was given wide-ranging authority to transform the Indonesian Wood Panel Producers Association (Asosiasi Produsen Panel Kayu Indonesia, or Apkindo) into a powerful collective marketing