P

resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said on Monday that the government would focus on infrastructure and human capital development before advancing research and development (R&D).

Before allocating more state funding to research, the President said, research institutions should be revamped to make sure their output can be used by industries.

“If we take a measure from our GDP [gross domestic product], the percentage for research and development is still very small even though the figure is about Rp 26 trillion [US$1.8 billion] per year.

“What I’m asking is, where are the results? It should have an end result that is useful for people, small industries and the country,” he said at Merdeka Palace.

Jokowi said the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) should be the center of Indonesia’s innovation and he would allocate funds to the agency.

According to the 2019 Global Innovation Index (GII), Indonesia still lags behind neighboring countries in terms of innovation. Indonesia was in 85th position among 129 countries or 14th among 15 Southeast Asian and Oceania countries. Malaysia was at 35th and Singapore topped the regional list in eighth place globally.

Meanwhile, according to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2019 Global Competitiveness Index, Indonesia ranks 50th, down five places from last year. The country’s R&D capability is ranked 47th, and its R&D expenditures ranked 116th out of 141 countries.

BRIN was established last month by Presidential Decree No. 74/2019 and was assigned to conduct integrated research, development, study and innovation. It also acts as a coordinating body between various research institutions and researchers to increase the output and quality.

“There shouldn’t be [overlapping] research that is conducted by three or four different agencies without any coordination,” Research and Technology Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro said.

Bambang, who is also head of BRIN, said that there were 329 R&D institutions inside various ministries and government agencies. He added that the agency would integrate research conducted by government agencies and state-owned universities starting in January.

Meanwhile, the ministry’s R&D director, Kemal Prihatiman, said that other than a lack of coordination, major obstacles faced by research agencies included the low number of researchers and outdated research instruments.

“It does not mean that the research institutions do not have the capabilities, but it is not enough,” he told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the event. “They must unite all of their potential.”

This way, he added, “researchers will know what they don’t have and other [research agencies] have so they could cooperate and increase their output.”

Kemal said that the government had conducted a mentorship program to upgrade 137 R&D agencies to become Superior Innovation Centers (PUI).

Center for Innovation Policy and Governance (CIPG) cofounder and adviser Irsan Pawennei also highlighted a lack of cooperation among research agencies.

“The lack of cooperation between research institutions and actors, even though they are working on the same research focus, is still a main challenge,” he said in a written statement.


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“There shouldn’t be [overlapping] research that is conducted by three or four different agencies without any coordination.”


Bambang Brodjonegoro

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Other challenges that affect the country’s R&D development are the lack of an ecosystem to support innovation, low awareness of the community about the importance of research, limited and scattered government funding and the low quantity of researchers, according to Irsan.

He said that BRIN could be the solution for the research bodies’ lack of coordination, if it acts as a regulator and facilitator, without doing the research itself.

Despite its huge role in uniting the fragmented research institutions, BRIN is still hampered by a funding shortage.

Indonesia’s spending on R&D only accounts for 0.25 percent of its GDP, far less than what neighboring countries spend.

Bambang said BRIN would get Rp 10 trillion from the total R&D budget.

To complement the limited budget, he urged research bodies to seek funds from private and state-owned companies through joint research programs or grants.

“We should be able to cooperate with the business sector because they’re the ones who understand what the public needs for R&D and its end products,” Bambang said.

The minister said researchers must effectively use their research funds as the allocated money for research is “not plentiful”. (mpr)