Institut Teknologi Bandung

He began his presentation by asking the student about the future of the Indonesian economy. Undoubtedly, the Indonesian economy has been affected by the Covid-19 for the last 2 years. This pandemic has caused a decline in various economic sectors, as the consequences for social limitation. This condition makes us wonder; how can we restore our economic condition?

Teguh said that there are three main points which will be discussed, those are the conditions before, during, and after the pandemic. Before the pandemic, there are three main challenges that are always highlighted, the first is Indonesia's low economic competitiveness in the ASEAN region due to the low productivity of Indonesian workers. The second and third challenges are Indonesia's high capital requirements for manufacturing activities when compared to other nations and Indonesia's low legal certainty index.

On the global scale, Indonesia's competitiveness index has two main problems, its basic education, and healthcare. To answer the first problem, Indonesia should differentiate between the rate of students that are going to school and the rate of students who actually learn something from school. "Currently, there are many Indonesian students that are going to school every day, but only a few of them are able to study," said Teguh. Furthermore, another issue that needs special attention is Indonesia's low productivity and low technology adoption index.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the disruptors of the Indonesian Economy, even to its third wave which is happening now," he said. Indonesia's current economy is very dependent on the government's response to this pandemic. Back in 2020, our economic growth was negative and only started to recover in 2021. Furthermore, Teguh explained that in 2021 Indonesia's economy was recovering because of the government's excellent fiscal and monetary coordination. This is shown by the decline of stimulus funds that the government needs to deliver, fewer social limitations (PPKM), and a successful vaccination campaign. Coincidentally, we are lucky that during that time the commodity prices of natural gas and coal were rising.

He said, after the pandemic, there will be a transformation towards a green, sustainable, and inclusive economy. The first stage is to have an economy that is resilient to disruption.

Then by providing social assistance to the society and resisting the economic recession. The next stage is the sustainable economic recovery process, and the last stage is in the long term slowly transforming the economy to be greener, more digital, more inclusive, and more stable.

Reporter: Kevin Agriva Ginting (Geodesy and Geomatic Engineering, 2020)
Translator: Favian Aldilla R (Civil Engineering, 2019)