President Jokowi: Indonesia Continues to Carry Out Economic Transformation

President Jokowi accompanied by Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung attends the TNI-Polri Leaders Meeting, Tuesday (03/01).(Photo: BPMI/Lukas)

The Government has announced it continues to make efforts to transform the country’s economy, one of which is by shifting from consumption sector to production sector.

According to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, to achieve this the Government is downstreaming the industry by discontinuing export of mineral and coal in the form of raw materials.

The President made the statement at the 2022 Leaders Meeting of the Indonesian National Defense Forces (TNI) and the Indonesian National Police (Polri) held at TNI Headquarters, in Cilangkap, East Jakarta, Tuesday (03/01).

“Since the VOC era 400 years ago, we have sent raw materials abroad. Now we need to stop it. We cannot let this continue. Indeed, we get money from the sale of raw materials, including nickel, copper, agricultural materials, agricultural commodities, and plantation commodities. But we need to generate more money. We have to get added values,” the President said.

The President also underscored that the added value is in the form of job opportunities as well as taxes and export duties so that non-tax state revenues are paid in Indonesia.

For this reason, the President ordered all ranks of the TNI and Polri to participate in overviewing industries that have added value.

“I call on the TNI and Polri to overview industries that have high added value such as nickel industry, coal industry, copper industry, and gold industry,” he said.

“This is our collective job. We stopped nickel export in 2020. This year we will stop bauxite export, followed by copper next year. Copper mixed with nickel to form lithium batteries or sodium ions, can be in the form of semi-finished goods or finished goods. So once again the added value is in the country. This is what economic transformation is all about,” he added.

President Jokowi also cited the importance of green economy, namely goods produced from factories with green energy that are environmentally friendly, adding that the foundation of green economy must be built from now.

“We are currently preparing the construction of Green Industrial Park in North Kalimantan province. That is our gateway to Indonesia’s green economy whose energy is obtained from a hydropower plant on the Kayan River. The Kayan River will produce approximately 11,000 to 12,000 megawatts electricity,” he said.

Furthermore, the Head of State said that Indonesia has a great potential to produce green energy because it has 4,400 rivers, adding that Indonesia also has a geothermal potential of 29,000 megawatts, wind energy, underwater currents, and solar power, all of which need to be well-managed.

“This is the strength of our country that other countries do not have. Therefore, the foundation must start as soon as possible and it is our job to maintain that,” he said.

In addition, the President also emphasized that the digitalization of transformation needs to be carried on, adding that the TNI-Polri must have digital talent in this digital era as it is characterized by artificial intelligence technology, cloud computing, digital design to blockchain.

“We will adopt digitalization in our daily life. If the police do not master those things, how can we tackle the digital crime which is started to happen today?” he remarked. (BPMI SETPRES/AIT) (EST/EP)