Built on the recommendation of the Think 20 (T20) Saudi Arabia, the “ideas bank” of the Group of 20, T20 Indonesia calls for G20 countries to move beyond gross domestic product (GDP) by complimenting it with inclusive wealth indicators by 2025.

The T20 Indonesia, through its Task Force 9- Global Cooperation for Sustainable Development Goal Financing, has introduced a stock-flow approach to measure the well-being of the G20. The multidimensional indicators will focus on measuring the inclusive wealth portfolio along with a small set of flow indicators related to both market and non-market sources of well-being in the economic, social and environmental domains.

It is groundbreaking given that our economy has long been infatuated by the so-called “GDP fetishism”, as growth in GDP remains to this day the predominant measure of progress across the world – economic success and government policy is measured and assessed by it and political survival hangs on it.

For a long-time, prominent economists have emphasized the limits of GDP. Amartya Sen, for instance, calls for broadening the term "development" beyond the current narrow focus on economic measures such as GDP and thus it should rather be viewed in terms of the real “freedoms” that people can enjoy such as economic facilities and social opportunities.

He argued that an increase in a country’s GDP growth rate may not be in direct proportion to the real freedoms that its citizens enjoy. Some countries might enjoy a higher per capita gross national product, but they have lower life expectancy. It is therefore very important to expose the limits of GDP as a measure of human well-being, environmental sustainability and the current rise of the digital economy.  

It is usually when governments opt to maximize economic growth that GDP is used to examine the policies. However, the pursuit of GDP growth as a policy goal has come at the cost of destabilization of the climate, the rise of inequality and social unrest.