D

isappointed with the lack of quality scientific research and products by Indonesian scientists, the government has set up a trust fund to generate and distribute funding for scientific research.

The scheme is the first of its kind in the country.

The trust fund, called the Indonesia Science Fund (DIPI), was established based on a 2012 report titled '€œCreating an Indonesian Science Fund'€ published by the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (AIPI), which explained in detail the funding problems plaguing the country'€™s scientific research.

Despite its high literacy rate of 95.6 percent and numerous quality universities and research institutions, Indonesia ranked 57th in the number of papers published in peer-reviewed journals between 1996 and 2014. The majority of Indonesian scientists shared their research credits with foreign scientists, with 74 percent of the country'€™s scientific projects coming in the form of international collaborations.

'€œThe problems that have hindered [the country'€™s science] are the relatively low research funding as well as the complicated financing mechanism, which has to follow the yearly cycle of the state budget,'€ Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro said during the launching of DIPI at his office.

At 0.09 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), Indonesian science funds are listed among the lowest in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation group, even lower than Bangladesh and Sudan.

Through the establishment of DIPI, Bambang said the government aimed to increase research funding to 1 percent of GDP in the hope that it would result in higher economic growth for the country.

South Korea, for instance, managed to grow its economy substantially as its government funds its research and development '€” from a poor 0.39 percent of GDP before the 1970s to the having world'€™s highest expenditure of 4.36 percent by 2012.

At the moment, DIPI will use the funding from the Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP), which is classified as an '€œeternal fund'€, as well as from foreign donors, such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the UK'€™s Newton Fund, according to DIPI steering committee member Satryo Soemantri Brodjonegoro.

The LPDP is a scholarship program overseen by the Finance Ministry, which financially supports Indonesian students to attain higher education overseas.

'€œWe will scout our researchers. If there are qualified researchers, we will count them and ask [for funding] from the LPDP based on the calculation. So our funding is actually unlimited,'€ he said.

Under the eternal fund scheme, the funds at the LPDP stay untouched. But part of the funds is invested in various of financial instruments, such as government bonds, with the investment returns '€” estimated to stand at more than Rp 2 trillion (US$150.9 million) annually '€” being used to finance Indonesian students for their higher education and research projects.

While DIPI had to rely on funding from the LPDP, it aimed to be entirely independent and manage its own eternal fund in the long run, Satryo said.

According to AIPI chairman Sangkot Marzuki, it is crucial for research funding mechanism to be detached from the state budget'€™s annual system because under the current government-sanctioned mechanism, researchers had no more than six months to carry out and complete their research.