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reative development is urgently needed in all sectors should Indonesia hope to survive the global financial crisis and grow into a prime nation, a university student alumni forum concluded Friday.

Held as part of the National Meeting (Munas) XI of the Family of Gadjah Mada University Alumni (Kagama), the dialogue forum was also attended by vice-president-elect Boediono, Education Minister Bambang Soedibyo, State Minister for Administrative Reforms Taufik Effendi and Public Work Minister Djoko Kirmanto, who are all alumni of the university.

Speaking at the forum led by the Jakarta Paramadina University rector Anis Baswedan as the moderator, Boediono said that it was Indonesian economic development and creativity that had given a birth to the country's economic resilience.

"Even during the hardest hit times of the global economic crisis by the end of 2008, we maintained positive economic growth," said Boediono who is also the former governor of the Central Bank of Indonesia.

That, according to Boediono, was worth noting especially as many of the world's developed and neighboring countries including Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, had experienced negative economic growth rates during the same time period.

"Drawing from the lessons learned from the previous global crisis 11 years ago, Indonesia has strong economic pillars both domestically and internationally," Boediono said.

He added that to make Indonesia a prime nation, there were nine challenges the country needed to deal with successfully in the near future.

They included challenges related to job opportunities, poverty, justice, environmental damage, the quality and quantity of infrastructure, human resources, bureaucracy, democracy and decentralization.

"To answer all the challenges, we have to have a good and clean bureaucracy. This is the key to moving the wheel of our economy forward," he said.

He also said that with the present condition and normal economic growth, by 2014, Indonesia would be able to increase its people's per capita income to US$2,800 from $2,000 in 2008.

"With a touch of creative development and economic growth above 6 percent, it is quite possible that Indonesia's per capita income could reach $3,500 by 2014," Boediono said.

National Education Minister Bambang Sudibyo, who was also a speaker at the forum, added that in terms of creating quality human resources, one way of doing so was through the implementation of the controversial law on educational legal entity (BHP).

He argued that through the implementation of the law, an educational institution could be fully independent and therefore more innovative and creative.

"In other words, the BHP law is not meant to make education more expensive, but to cut the intervention of bureaucracy from education instead," said Bambang Sudibyo.

He also denied accusations the BHP law would only legalize educational liberalization, arguing that pedagogical matters were fully given to the schools to allow them to be creative, innovative and independent.

He added that his office had been preparing a 2010 to 2014 strategic plan focused on the expansion of educational accessibility, improvement of educational quality and competitiveness as well as strengthening management and image accountability.