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In an effort to increase the effectiveness of autonomous local governments, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Wednesday called for better coordination between the central and regional governments over the next five years of his term.

“The central government should listen more to the regional governments and vice versa,” Yudhoyono said at the close of the three-day government retreat at Tampaksiring Palace in Bali. The Vice president, ministers, governors and members of the private sector were in attendance.

The call for better top-down coordination was a recurring theme throughout the meeting’s four working groups, which included economic development, pro-people programs, welfare distribution and the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.

Hatta Rajasa, the coordinating minister for the economy, said that over the last five years economic growth had been great but the disparity between provinces remained a problem. He said the central government needed to coordinate more with the regional governments for a more even-handed result.

A 2009 second-half report released by the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) in March, which studied eight districts after the regional autonomy law was introduced in 1999, suggested that the freedom to govern independently of the central government had failed to better some regions.

In addressing marginalized groups of people and their predicaments, Social Affairs Minister Salim Segaf Al Jufrie said the regional governments had failed to allocate adequate budget resources.

Moreover, Armida S Alisjahbana, head of the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) said that although the government has been relatively successful in meeting its Millennium Development Goal targets, disparity of results among regions was apparent.

Yudhoyono said that the governors should refer to the national figures as the benchmark of progress.

“If national economic growth reaches 6.5 percent,” provincial governments “must make sure that they also reach that level,” he said.

The meeting came up with a coordination protocol in which the central government and the regional governments would work together with a supervising unit led by a collection of ministries, said Agung Laksono, coordinating minister for people’s welfare.

Arya Fernandez, an analyst with the consulting firm Charta Politika, said that, ideally, regional autonomy would not hinder the government in achieving its goals of economic development and increasing people’s welfare.

He said that the autonomy ends the hierarchical relationship between the central and the regional governments, allowing the latter to create its own on the policy that would support the area’s progress, “as long as [the regional government] shares the same vision with the central government, which is the prosperity of the people.”

Fernandez added that when it came to formulating and implementing policy, the regional governments often didn’t invite public participation, resulting in policies that left many out.

Moreover, he also said that the head of the local government, which is appointed by the support of a political party, was often trapped by their party’s stance, limiting the formulation of their own policy.