TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo targeted Indonesia to become the world's seventh largest economy in 2030. He said the foundations to achieve this are being prepared.

“The foundations to compete with other countries must be arranged and built. Because in the future it won't be big countries defeating small countries or rich countries beating poor countries. The battle will be fast countries beating slow countries,” said the President when opening the National Gathering of the Indonesian Retired Army Association at Bogor Palace, West Java, Friday, August 5, 2022.

He explained that the first foundation to be prepared is the infrastructure. In the past seven years, Indonesia has constructed more toll roads up to 2,042 kilometers, 5,500 new airport non-toll roads, 15 new ports, 18 new dams, and 38 new irrigations covering an area of 1.1 million hectares.

The impact of this infrastructure will only be felt in the next 5-10 years. “Maybe we can't feel it instantly now and it will affect the state budget,” the state head remarked.

The second foundation is developing downstream industries. Through this, Indonesia will no longer export raw materials, but rather processed materials from mining products.

The last foundation is the digitization of MSMEs. He stated that 65.4 million MSMEs contributed to the economic growth of up to 61 percent. Thus, he is optimistic that digital MSMEs could boost the Indonesian economy from currently in 30th position to 7th in the world by 2030.

“Bappenas (National Development Planning Agency) and McKinsey calculate that we will become the world’s fourth largest economy in 2045,” said Jokowi.

M JULNIS FIRMANSYAH

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