Month: October 2021

President Joko Widodo called for the acceleration of a global economic recovery that is strong, inclusive, and sustainable at the economic and global health session of the G20 Summit in La Nuvola, Rome, Italy, on Saturday.

According to a statement released by the Presidential Secretariat’s Press Bureau, the President said that the G20 needs to serve as a catalyst for the normalization of economic policy since in the last two years, the world has carried out extraordinary policies in the fiscal, monetary, and finance sectors.

The G20 needs to also be a catalyst for debt liquidity and restructuring for poorer countries, as well as global connectivity for sectors that rely on human and goods mobility, including tourism and manufacturing, Widodo added.

He also touched upon cooperation in innovation, digital technology, and green technology, and investment for inclusive and sustainable development, as well as global cooperation for the advancement of developing countries at the meeting.

He further called for the strengthening of global health architecture.

To materialize this vision, he made three suggestions. First, countries must formulate a mechanism for pooling global health resources, including funding, vaccines, medicines, medical equipment, and medical workers, that can readily be deployed to countries in need, he said.

Secondly, the President called upon all leaders at the summit to establish a standard for health protocols with regard to activities between countries, including travel health protocols.

Last, he said he believed that the G20 needs to be a part of the solution for reducing gaps and scarcity in the availability of vaccines, medicines, and essential medical equipment.

Source: Antara News

Chairman of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) Arsjad Rasjid opined that Indonesia needs to develop digitalization in maritime industries in a bid to revive the country’s economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have been facing this pandemic for almost two years. For that reason, I see the need to develop digitalization in the maritime industries,” he said at the Virtual Maritime Expo Indonesia (VEMI) held by the Indonesian National Shipowners Association (INSA) that ANTARA joined from here on Sunday.

The ongoing urbanization in various regions in indonesia, especially in cities outside Java, had prompted an increase in the demands for logistics, Rasjid said.

The Kadin chairman opined that this urbanization growth requires additional logistics and infrastructure to connect islands and support the growing trend of e-commerce.

However, the slow logistics processes in Indonesia have caused high logistics costs, he added.

“Indonesia should improve the transition from land transportation to sea transportation processes in Java and Sumatra where shipping delays and the high costs mostly cause the lack of short sea shipping,” he remarked.

Rasjid affirmed that Kadin has prepared five strategies to support the shipping and maritime logistics industries in Indonesia.

The first strategy is forming a partnership between public and private players to create a digital multimodal logistics platform in a bid to create transparency in the system.

The second strategy is integrating data from all related stakeholders in public and private sectors to create a holistic view of all matters related to logistics while the third one is related to efforts to encourage the development of digital logistics technology, for instance, through mentoring programs and improvement of access to funding.

The fourth strategy is recommending necessary changes in regulations to facilitate information sharing between the public and private sectors, and the final one is developing information and telecommunication networks for sea transportation to support digitization.

“It is hoped that Kadin and INSA, through these five strategies, can jointly support efforts to achieve the vision of Indonesia Emas 2045 (Golden Indonesia 2045),” he said.

Source: Antara News

Indonesian Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani Indrawati said the global economic recovery from the tremendous impacts of COVID-19 pandemic is underway though it does not occur in all parts of the world partly due to unequal access to vaccines.

“There are countries (in Africa) whose vaccination rates of their total populations remain below three percent. On average, the vaccination rates of poor countries are only six percent of the populations while those of developed countries have reached above 70 percent or even close to 100 percent,” she said.

As disclosed in her statement at the Splendide Royal Hotel, Rome, Italy, on Saturday (30/10), after accompanying President Joko Widodo at the G20 Summit in La Nuvola, she said, in addition to the unequal access to vaccines, the world’s economic recovery is also threatened by inflation driven by soaring energy prices, and supply-chain disruption.

According to Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani, this is happening in all countries whose economic recoveries are very fast despite experiencing complications in the form of rising energy prices and supply-chain disruptions.

Furthermore, the Minister of Finance explained that the increase in energy occurred very quickly because investment in the energy sector, especially non-renewable energy, had fallen sharply in the face of soaring energy demand due to the economic recovery. The situation led to high inflation in various countries.

“This is a threat to global economic recovery. Indonesia also needs to remain vigilant,” Sri Mulyani said.

Owing to the fact that COVID-19 is a real threat to the world’s economy, she noted that finance ministers and health ministers of G20 countries agreed to build a mechanism called pandemic preparedness.

“Today, the world is not ready to face a pandemic. In fact (the pandemic) has cost up to 12 trillion US dollars, five million people died, and more than 250 million people were infected by this pandemic. So, the world must have better preparations,” Sri Mulyani said .

At the G20 Summit, there would be a joint finance health task force or working unit between the finance ministers and the health ministers under the G20 whose purpose was to prepare the prevention, preparedness, and response (PPR) of the pandemic.

The task force will be led by the Ministers of Finance of Indonesia and Italy.

“Indonesia will be the host or the presidency starting in December and Italy is now the presidency. Indonesia’s role is important because Indonesia is a big country and we also have a commitment to our vaccinations,” Sri Mulyani stated.

Source: Antara News

Head of the Research and Development Agency at the Ministry of Home Affairs Agus Fatoni has asked regional governments to keep staying committed to bureaucratic reform because it is essential to realize a clean and capable government, as well as to improve the quality of public services.

The bureaucratic reform is conducted by referring to eight areas of change, including the management of change, public service, supervision, accountability, institutions, as well as structuring the management sector, human resources (HR), and policy deregulation, he said.

In carrying out the bureaucratic reform in those eight areas, the regional governments need to implement policy breakthroughs in six innovation areas, Fatoni said in a statement that ANTARA received here Sunday.

Those six areas of innovation are essential and in line with the goals of bureaucratic reform so that changes could be realized more quickly, he said.

In detail, he expounded that innovation in the six areas includes administrative innovation, management innovation, policy innovation, frugal innovation, as well as innovation in the technology and social sectors.

For administrative innovation, the regional governments can adopt new ways of managing administration so that their performance accountability and decision making can be more effective and efficient.

He explained that innovation in the management area is an innovation that mainly focuses on fixing procedures and bureaucracy in a bid to improve organizational performance.

“The regional governments can make efforts to form policies that are more efficient, selective, applicable, and can be adopted by various parties to solve problems,” he said.

Aside from that, the regional governments are expected to generate product innovations at lower costs to respond to limited availability of resources. That step, he said, is called frugal innovation.

Meanwhile, for innovation in the technology sector, the regional administrations can adopt new production processes by doing a series of research and development, or in other words, technology transfer.

“Innovation in the social sector must also be included. This effort is aimed to improve socio-economic conditions and realize more inclusive development,” he remarked.

Source: Antara News