Moving towards sustainable development: Indonesian Government must improve its educational system
By: O. Safitrie *)
Indonesian economy shows a promising potential in recent years even though the world economy is slowing down in this aftermath of Global Financial Crisis. The country is no longer included in “Fragile Five” categorized by Morgan Stanley for the most vulnerable fragile markets in the end of The Fed quantitative easing. Moreover, the country together with India and China were the only G-20 countries that still grow at more than 5 percent in 2014. In past ten years, Indonesia’s macroeconomic indicators show significant progress In line with this optimism, according to an IHS’s Asia-Pacific expert, Rajiv Biswas, Indonesian economy is predicted to keep growing at around 5.4% per year until 2020 and the GDP will double by 2023 reaching an estimated $2,1 trillion.
However, the economy signals a slowdown last year that continues until the first quarter of this year. The growth in 2014 was recorded as the lowest since 2009 at only 5.02%.
Will Indonesia be able to realize the optimists’ expectations? The answer will subject to many conditions. Given the abundant natural resources and huge population, the country has all it needs to be the new economic giant. There must be a strong explanation on why an economic pundit like Nouriel Roubini mentioned Indonesia as the future in his speech “goodbye China, hello Indonesia”. The country has everything any country might envy for. Indonesia is blessed with abundant natural resources and a big population who are now in the productive age. However, some challenges remain in place including poor quality of human resources. Regardless the naturally endowed blessing, a country must have the right man to allocate all those resources so that it can generate a sustainable growth.
Notwithstanding such big opportunities, the realization will heavily rely on how the government seizes them so that this would not be another ‘missed opportunity’. Indonesian economy faces so many challenges. The most argued challenges are corruption and the lack of infrastructure. These two will become determining factors for Indonesian economy to achieve or not to achieve the expected sustainable growth rate. Another important factor that received less attention is the human capital.
Human resources development is indeed playing a critical role in fostering self-sustained economic development. One channel to develop human capital is through education. Good education system can be a powerful tool that might help a country in achieving its economic objectives. It helps country to increase innovation, productivity, efficiency and competitiveness that will accelerate the economic growth. With correct measures, it can also help the country to fight poverty and reduce income inequality. Lastly, it can reduce country’s dependency to foreign labor that might pose some threat to the country. Thus, it is clear that Indonesian government needs to improve the educational system.
*) The Author Is Singapore Contributor
