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Indonesia formulates plan to become upper-middle income country
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Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati (AFP/Zach Gibson)
F
inance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday that Indonesdia is formulating plans to become a upper-middle income country.
“We just presented our development challenges […] for Indonesia to upgrade itself from a middle- to an upper-middle income country,” Sri Mulyani said as quoted by Antara.
During the meeting, she elaborated on the macroeconomic and basic fiscal policies for 2020 in front of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, Vice President Jusuf Kalla and Cabinet members.
She said the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) had also presented the Government Working Plan (RKP) and the Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN), which will become the foundation to formulate the 2020 state budget.
The issue discussed focused on human resources development, starting from education strategies, health, social safety nets to vocational programs for workers wanting to upgrade their skills.
“But it is still in an early phase. So we talked only about the direction it should take,” the minister said.
The objective was to create more capable human resources to improve productivity through innovation with the final goal to increase the competitiveness of Indonesian products in the global market, Sri Mulyani added.
She said to improve competitiveness, the government would also find a way to encourage the manufacturing sector to help create a more balanced economic structure with the hope that it would help boost exports to ease the country’s trade deficit.
Sri Mulyani added that a more detailed concept would be presented at the next Cabinet meeting before the government formulates the basic items for the 2020 state budget draft to be presented in the House of Representatives in May. (bbn)
