Defining Precisely What is 'Downstream' Activity for Indonesia?

Employment: Both knowledge transfer and local content initiatives should be generating significant employment, in particular for youth. Notably, all three candidates in the 2024 presidential election promised to ‘do something’ about job creation. Jobs creation and downstream go hand in hand, and consolidate each other. Therefore, the focus must be on training youth to engage in and amplify downstream. Paid internships and business incubators that get youth involved are the first half-step, the real drivers though come in lowering obstacles such as in reducing bureaucracy to hire young people formally, and correspondingly dismantling the monopoly power state-owned companies exert on the economy. These will be Prabowo’s, or any politician's, test in getting more people employed.

Environment and ecology: This may be the most important, but a hidden component of downstream. A successful downstream requires strong environmental awareness, such as in fishing, farming, parks, wildlife, etc… Are the sites being used to mine and drill for oil being returned to their natural states such as in ‘abandoned site recovery’ efforts? Does the downstream initiative over-pollute (such as in Jakarta Bay, Citarum River, or the Mahakam in coal-rich Kalimantan), thus making any downstream activity worse off for the wear? Pollution has a real cost to the society and people’s health. While that seems obvious, downstream that ignores waste generation is a zero-sum creation, or 'I win, you lose’ game. 

A final note here, merely trying to legislate all the above with diktats and proclamations in the letter of ‘procedures’ is useless. People and businesses will always find ways to get around that, downstream rules must be legislated in substance, or holistically, meaning with a real integration and alignment of the various aspects of the downstream activity, as noted in above. 

Simply, Indonesia must prioritize expanded downstream policies in natural resource sectors with a bigger impact on small businesses, the environment, vocational training, youth, and job creation. If the politicians, and their advisors, merely define ‘downstream’ as more money from processes,  they are missing the point, and creating damage rather than solutions.  A larger and more comprehensive definition then must be sought that engages all society, not the few. 

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