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From tall order to piece of cake: Presidential candidates vow to beef up R&D
The vision and mission documents of the three candidates vying for the presidency next year show that all are committed to boosting the country's R&D spending, but experts commented that their individual targets ranged widely from “way too pessimistic” to “too ambitious”, with only one candidate addressing the necessary institutional restructuring.
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Presidential candidates (from left) Prabowo Subianto, Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo join hands on Oct. 30, 2023 for a photo session at Merdeka Palace in Central Jakarta, following a luncheon hosted by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. (Antara/Andi Firdaus)
All three presidential candidates have submitted campaign documents declaring the same commitment to ramp up spending on research and development (R&D) if they win, but experts said some of the defined targets looked “too ambitious” while others were "too easy" to meet.
Indonesia’s research and development (R&D) expenditure was a mere 0.24 percent of GDP in 2021, according to data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). That translates to US$2.85 billion in hard figures, given Indonesia’s GDP of $1.18 trillion that year.
The three candidates’ campaigns thus promise an increase of between twofold to tenfold in the R&D share of GDP from 2021.
According to the required vision and mission documents submitted to the General Elections Commission (KPU), the Prabowo Subianto-Gibran Rakabuming Raka pair has the highest target, aiming to hike R&D spending to between 1.5 and 2 percent of GDP by 2029.
The candidate pair of Ganjar Pranowo and Mahfud MD has targeted 1 percent of GDP over the same period, while the Anies Baswedan-Muhaimin Iskandar pair has targeted a range of between 0.4 and 0.6 percent.
The government has repeatedly expressed its confidence in reaching GDP of $3.5 trillion by 2030, assuming an annual GDP growth rate of above 5 percent.
Based on that assumption, GDP in Indonesia could reach $3.32 trillion by 2029. This would put the presidential hopefuls’ R&D targets within a range of $13.3 billion and $66.5 billion, or between five to 23 times the 2021 figure.
