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Discourse: Investment in film industry needs to be opened up: Triawan
Triawan Munaf - AntaraWith a target to double the output of the creative industry, which has accounted for 7 percent of the countryâs gross domestic product (GDP) in recent years, President Joko âJokowiâ Widodo established the Creative Economy Agency earlier this year
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Triawan Munaf - Antara
With a target to double the output of the creative industry, which has accounted for 7 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) in recent years, President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo established the Creative Economy Agency earlier this year.
The agency is expected to work more effectively in supporting creative entrepreneurship in comparison with the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry established in the previous administration.
The Jakarta Post's Nadya Natahadibrata recently talked to Creative Economy Agency head Triawan Munaf about his program to improve the country's creative industry. Here are edited excerpts from the interview.
Question: During the first year of the establishment of the Creative Economy Agency, what will be your priority programs?
Answer: The creative economy sector and its subsectors are fields that will continue to develop, and have all the potential to become the country's main source of income. Ideas are a renewable energy source. So, what we would like to develop during the first year of the agency's establishment is create a solid foundation in order to accelerate the creative economy sectors, by creating supportive regulations so that this industry can really take off.
What kind of a foundation and what kinds of regulations can support the industry?
One of the regulations is the Negative Investment List (DNI). If some of the industry's subsectors were taken out of the list, it could invite more investors into the industry and create competition. Competition will stimulate people to do better. Here in Indonesia we still need to beg investors to construct a theater that meets international standards, for instance. Therefore we have to build a good foundation so the industry will grow by itself.
Another example is investment in the film industry. Investment in film production should be open to foreign investors to spur the industry's growth and allow the transfer of technology to improve the quality of the country's film industry.
Second, we need more film distributors, whose tasks are not only to distribute films but also to curate them so the public will have a greater variety of movies to watch. Currently, we only have limited movie distributors and we need more to expand the market.
Indonesia is among the countries in the world with lowest number of movie theaters per capita. With a population of 250 million people, the country only has 1,000 movie theaters. This number is lower in comparison with Vietnam. We should at least quadruple the number.
Currently, not all people are comfortable watching movies in cinemas because the market is too segmented. The cinemas were not built for people who come from different social backgrounds. We need to increase the number of cinemas, particularly in the remote areas to increase the country's habit of watching movies.
Apart from the movie industry, what other subsectors and which regulations should be improved?
Fine arts. For example, if Indonesians were participating in an exhibition abroad, they would have to pay taxes when they return home with their works. The government imposes high taxes on these artists. We are far behind Vietnam in supporting our creative people.
What will the agency do to encourage creative people to stay in Indonesia?
Give them access to capital. The industry is still very weak because not all investors are willing to invest in this industry.
Now, with Law No. 28/2014 on intellectual property rights, an idea can be used as loan collateral. The idea, however, needs to be well polished so that it has a high value and can actually be used as collateral for a loan request at a bank.
One of our major tasks is to help these people with creative and brilliant ideas, and educate them about how to polish their ideas into a valuable product so they can have access to funding.
Which subsector in the creative industry do you think hasn't yet been developed enough?
Film. Our biggest contributors currently are food and fashion, especially Muslim fashion, even though these subsectors can grow much larger than they are now.
What do you think about the game and application? What's the potential?
One of the examples is Alegrium. A game application that was created by application developer Alegrium is currently ranked number four as the most downloaded game in the US. Alegrium is a Jakarta-based startup company, financed and developed by Indonesians.
What President Jokowi wants is to prevent such game developers from having a short period of success and then selling their application to foreign companies. We want them to be able to continuously contribute in increasing our foreign exchange income, to become the new Indonesian billionaires, like the founder of Facebook.
We can't prevent them from selling their products because it is their own company and they can do whatever they want with the products. But of course we will do as much as we can to encourage them to keep developing the products in the country by providing supportive regulations and also incentives. But we still have a long way to go to realize all these plans.
