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Prabowo vows to ‘dismantle’ business regulations
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On a mission: A YouTube screenshot shows President Prabowo Subianto speaking at an economic forum broadcast live on April 8, in Jakarta. (Presidential Secretariat/YouTube/-)
P
resident Prabowo Subianto has ordered the government to extensively cut back business regulations, including local content requirements and import restrictions, a day before the United States is set to slap steep import tariffs on Indonesian goods.
Speaking at a public economic forum on Tuesday, the President said he had made it his “mission” to deregulate the economy and eliminate “convoluted” business bureaucracy.
“Throw away all the regulations that don’t make sense. Make it easy! Make business processes easy!” Prabowo said in front of government officials, businesspeople, economists and journalists.
Specifically, he vowed to make the regulation on local content requirements (TKDN) “more flexible” because it “ends up making us less competitive”.
Another concrete instruction by the President was to eliminate quotas issued by the government for specific parties to import certain amounts of commodities, such as staple foodstuffs.
“[So that] anyone who wants to import beef, they can do so. Whatever anyone wants to import, [let them] go ahead, open it [the market]. Our people are smart,” said Prabowo.
The government is looking to import more American-made products to reduce Indonesia’s bilateral trade surplus with the world’s largest economy, which amounted to US$18 billion last year.
