The working committee is to discuss this synchronization through an omnibus bill. The committee also plans to formulate two investment-related bills that focus on job creation and the empowerment of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The omnibus bill is to consolidate dozens of laws into one law, formulated for synchronizing many overlapping regulations.

The committee, led by legislator Rieke Diah Pitaloka of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), has begun its work even though some factions in the House have yet to officially appoint members to the committee.

The Baleg members on Wednesday met with the government representatives, including Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Mahfud MD, Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Pandjaitan and Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister secretary Susiwijono at the House’s compound in Senayan, Central Jakarta.

During the meeting, the lawmakers agreed to work closely with the government by also making a list of overlapping laws that needed to be scrapped, for addition to the current list. At the same time, it urged the government to immediately submit the final list, the draft bills and the academic assessment.

"We need to work as quickly as possible so that the House can immediately finish its list of priority bills [Prolegnas] for the 2020 period," Baleg chairman Supratman Andi Agtas said on Wednesday.

The Gerindra Party politician said the House was expected to compile the Prolegnas by Dec. 18 or before the recess period. Therefore, the government is in a race against time if it wants the two bills to be included in the list. “This is a very urgent task," Supratman said.

Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto previously said the government has finished mapping the overlapping laws and that the omnibus bill would be added to the upcoming Prolegnas.

He said his office has been working on the bill since the tenure of previous coordinating minister Darmin Nasution when it initially only aimed to simplify business licensing and investment processes in the country.

Darmin assessed more than 70 prevailing laws and produced an academic report, which he passed to Jokowi a few days before his inauguration for his second presidential term.

However, during his presidential inauguration speech, Jokowi suddenly came up with two new laws that would be harmonized through the omnibus bill, namely a harmonization of laws on job creation and on the empowerment of SMEs, which would be extensions of Darmin’s work, citing the aim to go beyond investment growth.

Given the broader topics, Susiwijono, who represented Airlangga during the Wednesday meeting, said the number of overlapping laws on the list may indeed increase and the government needed more time to identify them.

The current list includes revisions to Law No. 23/2014 on regional administration, Law No. 30/2014 on state administration and another 69 laws related to the licensing process for businesses.

“We only received the President’s [Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo] direction [about the extension] last Monday and now we are still working on it with the relevant ministries and institutions. It’s still in the initial stage,” Susiwijono said.

Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly on Wednesday said the government would finish the academic reports on these two new topics as soon as possible. “We will submit the draft to the House by January," he said, mentioning that the new bills would include some provisions concerning such things as labor, business entities, bankruptcy, licensing, land, spatial planning and the environment.

Supratman, however, said the government should at least submit the draft bill of the investment-related law that focuses on job creation by December if finishing the two planned bills was too much.

“But if the government can’t finish any of them, we could add them to our long-list and revise the Prolegnas later," he said.

The House's working committee, alongside the government, said it would work quickly to comb out the laws that needed revisions related to the two topics. The committee would be assisted by the House's research body and the Law and Human Rights Ministry would be assisted by its national legal advisory body.

"We want to work fast. We [the House committee] have met with our research board and they are currently listing which laws that we could harmonize," Rieke said.

After both the House and the government have wrapped up the list, they are to again examine the need for revisions to the laws, as the problem may not be in the laws themselves, but the other regulations under them: for example, the ministerial regulations (Permen) or by laws (Perda).

"We will recheck other regulations too. If there are legal products that are more progressive than the law, we will later make them a part of the law," she said.

The omnibus bill method was first introduced during the last months of Jokowi’s first term by Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who said that the government had a plan to issue one in the tax sector to amend the General Taxation Law, Income Tax Law and Value Added Tax Law, the revisions of which had so far been deliberated sluggishly.

Experts doubt that the lawmakers would have sufficient experience and skills to review all existing related regulations through the omnibus bill method as there is much work to do, saying the cross-sector coordination could also be a challenge for the government and lawmakers.

Mahfud said the “omnibus bill” term was just a method to help streamline many overlapping regulations into one. “Therefore, the public should not think that it is strange," the minister said.

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