With the help of tech giants like Google, Cisco and Microsoft, the scholarships will equip participants under 29 years old across 20 provinces with various skills, including in cybersecurity, cloud computing, coding and digital entrepreneurship.

Depending on the applicants' preferences and educational backgrounds, the classes will range from two weeks to two months with at least 11,000 online and 14,000 in classroom scholarships.

Afterward, graduates can seek internships at over 2,600 companies that could later provide employment opportunities.

“Various industries need a huge amount of digital technicians yet we have a shortage of manpower. So this is an initiative to reduce [the deficit],” Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara said at a public discussion on Thursday.

He quoted 2018 data from the McKinsey Global Institute and World Bank that projected a shortage of 9 million skilled and semiskilled workers in Indonesia between 2015 and 2030.

There are also challenges in ensuring workers receive the right level of education, with fewer than 10 percent of Indonesia’s 250 million people having university-level education, based on Statistics Indonesia's 2015 national labor force survey.

The ministry’s human resources research and development head, Basuki Yusuf Iskandar, claimed that at least 20 percent of the 25,000 applicants were expected to be employed by the end of this year and the rest by the end of 2020.

But the program will not solve the problem entirely, Rudiantara said, as he estimates 600,000 skilled workers are needed every year to cover the deficit. He expressed hope that the initiative would serve as an example for other ministries, industries and NGOs that are keen to follow in his team’s footsteps.

“We won’t catch up if we do business as usual,” Rudiantara said. “So let’s all do something about it.”

Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) chairman Rosan Perkasa Roeslani said privately owned enterprises held the key to boosting the ministry’s efforts through on-the-job training after workers undergo the scholarship program.

He praised the ministry's plan to team up with thousands of companies as part of the program. He said companies grouped under Kadin and the Indonesian Employers Association would provide at least 2,000 opportunities for graduates to either work or undergo internships.

Private sector involvement, he added, was especially important as digital trade was poised to become a major sector. According to a report by AlphaBeta, the Hinrich Foundation and Centre for Strategic and International Studies, the digital trade sector could create Rp 2.3 quadrillion (US$172 billion) worth of domestic economic opportunities by 2030.

A 2018 study by tech giant Google and Singaporean holding company Temasek expects Indonesia’s digital economy to dominate Southeast Asia by 2025, as its market value triples to $100 billion by 2025 from $27 billion in 2018.

“Since we want to be a center for the digital economy, we need to anticipate [demand] for skilled workers starting from now […] or else we will be left behind while leaving a burden for future [generations] to handle,” Rosan said.

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