Addressing reporters on Wednesday, the chief of the newly formed National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Bambang Brodjonegoro, said the “relatively small research budget” would be directed to research and innovation that could accelerate development and improve macreconomics in the country, which has lately been clouded by a trade deficit.

The Rp 36 trillion (US$2.56 billion) Indonesia is spending on research and development (R&D) only accounts for 0.25 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), far less than what neighboring countries spend.

“We’ve spent the biggest amount of funding on the many research and development bodies in ministries and state agencies. The five ministries with the most funding are the Agriculture Ministry, Health Ministry, Public Works and Housing Ministry, Industry Ministry and Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry,” said Bambang, who is also the research and technology minister.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati addressed the issue in July, saying the limited research funds, less than those of other Asian countries, were disbursed to research and development bodies in 45 ministries and state agencies. Less than half of the money was used for research. The remainder went to operations and other purposes, she said.

This year, the government has allocated Rp 35.73 trillion for research and development.

According to the Finance Ministry, only 30.8 percent of the budget is used for research and development purposes, 10.2 percent for the training of human resources and 8.8 percent for capital expenditure. Operational expenditure takes up the largest slice of the cake at 50.1 percent.

Bambang said the limited funds and the work by state agencies had been so scattered that research duplication was inevitable, resulting in fewer desired results. He mentioned the food security issue as an example as many agencies had tried to create top-quality rice seeds all at the same time instead of opting to discover alternatives to rice.

The funding system had also led to researchers producing output that lacked innovation just so they could play it safe when going through audits by the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK), he said.

Indonesia still lags behind in terms of innovation, as shown by the 2018 Global Innovation Index (GlI) that placed the country in 85th position among 126 countries, or 14th among 15 Southeast Asia and Oceania countries.

Meanwhile, the 2019 World Intellectual Property Indicators recorded that only 14.4 percent of the 9,754 patent applications in the country in 2018 were from resident applicants. Of the more than 1,300 resident applicants, only 790 were granted rights, according to the research ministry.

“There are differences between research outputs produced out of fear of being audited and those resulting from true innovation. These administrative outputs made just to play it safe when going through audits must be left behind. We want research outputs made out of these limited funds to be truly useful,” Bambang said.

The BRIN was established to consolidate research and development bodies in each ministry and state agency along with nonministerial research bodies and universities, as well as state-owned and private companies.

Bambang, a former national development planning minister and finance minister, said the agency aimed to bolster inventions, prototypes, patents and innovative products that had for a long time gone underutilized by down-streaming them to the industry.

The gap between the industry and researchers has long been a concern among experts. The National Development Planning Agency’s (Bappenas) latest technocratic draft of the National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPUMN) 2020-2024, citing government data, stated there were only 52 innovative products used by the industry and firms in 2018.

Indonesian Academy of Sciences (AIPI) secretary-general Chairil Abdini suggested that less state money be distributed to research and development bodies in ministries and state agencies, arguing that the government should just focus on basic research, such as policy research.

“If they focus on R&D, then it’s better to spin them off into state-owned enterprises or into firms on their own. That way they’re not funded by the state, but rather by selling their products to state or private firms. The R&D is supposed to be carried out by firms instead of the government,” he said.

He cited as an example private firms in the United States that spend more on research and development than the government, which focused rather on basic research.

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, US businesses’ spending on research and development is more than five times higher than that of the government. In Indonesia, the government still spends more than businesses.

Chairil cited an Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) survey involving between 300 and 400 firms that found that these firms only spent a total of Rp 1.3 trillion on research and development, a small figure that showed more needed to be done to improve industry’s involvement.

He acknowledged that this was largely because of the country’s weak domestic industry, suggesting that the government could gradually start with state-owned firms.

“Innovations need markets. BRIN’s task is not only to maintain synergy within the process chain, starting from research and innovation to commercial products, but also between state institutions that create policies on the market,” he said.

The University of Indonesia’s Center for Sustainable Infrastructure Development (CSID) director Mohammed Ali Berawi said that with the establishment of BRIN, research funds should not be distributed on the basis of institutions, but rather on projects that could cross sectors.

Multisectoral research and innovation could bring about higher impacts than sectoral projects that had been observed in the country thus far, the CSID expert argued.

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