President Jokowi’s Vision on Indonesia 2019-2024: the Grand Old Talk on Investment and the Missing Points on Technological Utilizatio

As General Election Commission has officially announced Joko Widodo as the elected President of Indonesia for 2019-2024, thus he presented his vision through an open speech entitled Visi Indonesia (Indonesian Vision) on Sunday, 14 July 2019. He underlined the urgency to be open towards investment as he believes that it is equal to wider job opportunity. On that occasion, he also stated that supportive bureaucracy should be built to lubricate such investment and any party indicated hindering the investment will face severe consequences.
Jokowi did well in explaining how investment will create wider job opportunities, however here comes few missing points that were promoted many times during his presidential debate, but were not mentioned at all on the recent speech.

The Missing Points in the Speech

During his presidential campaign, Jokowi took pride in his deep understanding on the utilization of technology in many sectors, including digital economy development (CNN Indonesia, 2019). He has also expressed his ambition on building technology infrastructure that will provide an established digital economy ecosystem as an incentive for businessmen or entrepreneurs to grow more productively and rapidly. In addition, Jokowi has articulated his commitment in the development of digital economy as stated during the G20 Summit in Osaka last June (Anya, 2019). Therefore, it is a huge miss that Jokowi did not mention about the technological utilization and its impact to investment in one of the visions on Indonesia 2019-2024.

Jokowi could have explored on these following points more strategically: 1) boosting up economic development
through technology, 2) building technological infrastructure, and 3) potential new policies in supporting digital
economy. Citizens might have wanted to know more about those because he seemed very clear in his stance in
supporting technology advancement and developing digital economy proven by his previous speeches and what
he has done during his first term. The continuation of the program is such a promise for the actors playing roles
in the industry and for those who were not informed well about the mutual correlation between investment and
technological advancement.

Although President Jokowi missed stating the points on utilization of technologies for economic development and digital economy on his speech last Sunday, hopefully he will still commit to the matters. If he is persistent to build more receptive condition towards investment, he might as well include more investment on digital economy or technological infrastructures. Nonetheless, several things are needed to be improved in regards of utilization of technology and digital economy to make them work efficiently. Firstly, government needs to provide more space for entrepreneurs to innovate. It is not good to control them too much as it can hinder their creativity to innovate (The Jakarta Post, 2018).

Secondly, providing better climate for investors to invest in digital economy and technological infrastructures is
important. It can be seen from the data by Investment Coordinating Board that FDI invested in technological
sector were still relatively low in 2016-2018. However, investment in technological sector indeed increased in the first quarter of 2019 and that is a good sign for enhancement. FDI should also be prioritized considering that investment from abroad will be followed up with transfer of technology that is important as Indonesia is still learning to adapt to the new technology.

Lastly, as digital economy is prone to cyber attacks such as issues on users’ privacy and the transaction processes, the government should strengthen its cyber security and legal frameworks to ensure the potential risks will be managed accordingly. Strengthening cyber security may be achieved by reinforcing cyber diplomacy with other countries because such attacks are often done in a transnational manner. Therefore, there should be a cooperation from government-to-government or business-to-business in regards of cyber attacks on economic facilities such as fintech that work similarly to conventional bank. We can learn this by how Japan proposed international agreement to secure data exchange (Anya, 2019).

References
Anya, A. (2019). Jokowi focuses on digital economy, human capital at Osaka G20 Summit. The Jakarta Post.
Retrieved from https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2019/06/28/jokowi-focuses-on-digitaleconomy-
human-capital-at-osaka-g20-summit.html
Badan Koordinasi Penanaman Modal. (2019). Press Release Investment Realization in the First Quarter of 2019
Reached Rp 195.1 Trillion, Increased by 5.3% (Press Release April 2019). Retrieved from: https://
www.bkpm.go.id/en/publication/press-release
Badan Koordinasi Penanaman Modal. (2018). Press Release Investment Realization in the First Quarter of 2018
Remain Increase Significantly, Reached About Rp 185.3 trillion (Press Release April 2018). Retrieved
from: https://www.bkpm.go.id/en/publication/press-release
Badan Koordinasi Penanaman Modal. (2017). Press Release Investment Realization in First Quarter of 2017
Reached Rp. 165.8 trillion (Press Release April 2017). Retrieved from: https://www.bkpm.go.id/en/
publication/press-release
Badan Koordinasi Penanaman Modal. (2016). Press Release Investment Realization in First Quarter of 2016
Rose 17,6% “Optimism on Improved Investment Climate Confirmed” (Press Release April 2016).
Retrieved from: https://www.bkpm.go.id/en/publication/press-release
CNN Indonesia. (2019, February 19). Full Debat Kedua Capres 2019, Joko Widodo dan Prabowo Subianto
[Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck4gJyO4GMc
The Jakarta Post. (2018). BKPM helps accelerate digital economy wave in Indonesia. The Jakarta Post. Retrieved
from https://www.thejakartapost.com/adv/2018/11/12/bkpm-helps-accelerate-digital-economywave-
in-indonesia.html

Writer : Arindha Nityasari