The fall of rupiah prior to the economic crisis have also open up the government 

view of the importance aspects of encouraging export on resources based product 

and this type of export commodity were mostly carried out by the SME. However, 

the SME were experiencing lots of problems in undertaking these export 

activities. Firstly, is the bureaucracy barrier concerning in obtaining business 

license and permits and high business costs created by the bureaucracy. The other 

is the implementation of the new regional autonomy bill starting on January 2000.  

Furthermore, there is a crucial need of allowing the business and the communities 

to keep pace with the global information era through use of the Information and 

Communication Technology. In the context of the situation mentioned above, the 

government of Indonesia has asked the support of PEG USAID to learn and 

exercise means to development the SMEs exporters in Indonesia. This study will 

look into the uses of ICT by the SME exporters and also to obtain information of 

their perception of the implementation of the new regional autonomy bill (U.U 

No. 22 and 25 year 1999) in 8 big cities in Indonesia. 

1.2 The Objectives    

The purpose of this study is to obtain information on the: 

1. 

Incidence of computer use by exporters 

2. 

Incidence of Internet use by exporters 

3. 

Degree to which exporters are using the Internet 

4. 

The impact of decentralization on the business climate for SMEs 

VI    2