RI seeking to join world`s major economies club

Antara News, Thursday, December 30, 2010

Bogor, West Java (ANTARA News) - Indonesia is expecting to become one of the world`s ten biggest economies in 2025 with its gross domestic product expected to reach US$3.7 to 4.7 trillion and the per capita income at US$12,000.

The country`s chief economic minister, Hatta Rajasa, said on the sidelines of a limited cabinet meeting on economy led by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the presidential palace here on Thursday he believed the target could be achieved because right now Indonesia has already been the world`s 16th biggest economy.

He said Indonesia even hoped it could become the sixth biggest in 2050.

"We will push Indonesia to become an advanced country and a world power," he said.

For that he said the government had held the meeting to design a road map to speed up and expand the country`s economy that would combine regional and sectoral powers.

"What we are discussing is focussing the master plan of the road map on targets and goals of the Indonesian vision until 2025," he said.

In the master plan the country`s economic potentials are mapped into six integrated economic clusters or corridors to make natural resources in each of the clusters exploitable fully.

The paradigm for natural resource exploitation has also been changed so that industrial developement would no longer depend upon extractive industries but manufacturing based on natural resources to increase the added value for Indonesia.

Based on the policy, he believed, regional income would jump four to six times higher than now.

"We have already identified all the corridors, So there won`t be no region that we would not turn into a new growth area based on natural resources. Natural resources will be turned into foreign exchange income. We will change natural resources into growth," he said.

As an example he said the Sumatra corridor which would be connected with Java to become a palmoil and metal mineral industrial clusters with the availability of infrastructure that connects the two islands through the Sunda Strait bridge.

He said the idea of economic development acceleration and expansion based on a corridor system that connects regional and sectoral powers was expected to be started as of 2011.

In view of that he said the master plan was expected to be finished soon and issued through a presidential decree in 2011.

He said the presidential decrees are inseparable from Law Number 17 of 2008 on national long-term development plans and therefore the masterplan would not change when the national leadership undergoes changes.

"That is the essence of what we were discussing," he said.

He said funding for the economic development would be from public-private partnership from home and abroad.

He said the investment portion based on the scheme would comprise more than 70 percent of the funding.

As of now, he said, the government has already prepared an investment climate to boost investors` optimism by improving the regulations in various fields including taxation and land ownership.

"So, it will be clear for us what we are going to build based upon the document, howmuch the cost would be. We are still discussing it and after it is done the results will be put into a single solid document," he said.