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Indonesia remains ‘light years’ from even development across the regions
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President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo speaks with the media after the departure ceremony of the National Disaster Management Agency's (BNPB) mission to deliver humanitarian aid, 60 tonnes of medical and hygiene supplies on two planes, to Egypt for Palestinian refugees and Sudan at Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport in Jakarta on April 3, 2024. (AFP/Yasuyoshi Chiba)
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ndonesia has seen little to no progress in shifting the focus of development away from Java over the past decade, notwithstanding the promise of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to even out economic activity across the country.
Jokowi, who is stepping down on Oct. 20, has pointed to his landmark projects of building downstream industries and moving the government out to a new capital city in Kalimantan as ways to help less developed regions of the country catch up, but the data are disappointing.
Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) executive director Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday that Indonesia was “light years away” from an even development, given the “Java-centric” economy.
“The narrative and development realization are not in sync,” said Bhima, adding that there was a “paradox” given the public accounts of shifting economic activity away from Java while big-ticket infrastructure projects were still carried out on the island.
To name a few, the island has seen the establishments of the high-speed railway in West Java, the Batang Industrial Estate in Central Java and PT Freeport Indonesia’s copper smelter in East Java.
The latest data on the government’s National Strategic Projects (PSN), which the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister provided to the Post on Tuesday, reveal that Java wrapped up as many as 74 projects since mid-2016 with a total value of Rp 610.9 trillion (US$38.92 billion).
Sumatra came in second with 36 projects adding up to a far lower value of Rp 348.2 trillion, while other regions have seen fewer than half as many PSN completed as Java, with values much lower.
