Zudan argues that the longer civil servants work, the more likely they are incentivized to improve their skills and more effectively aid the bureaucracy in realizing the government’s agenda.

Korpri’s proposal specifies the new retirement age should apply to only those in leadership posts while suggesting other maximum limits for different levels: 65 for mid-level government employees, such as institutional heads, and between 62 and 63 for those in the lower rungs of the hierarchy. The prevailing law sets a retirement age of 60 for such roles.

This suggestion is supported by the higher life expectancy of Indonesians, which increased from 65.5 in 2000 to 74 in 2024. Moreover, the recently enacted Indonesian Military (TNI) Law revision extends soldiers’ retirement age to between 55 and 65, with the TNI commander allowed to serve until 67 with the president’s consent.

But policymakers should think twice before adopting the proposal, which Zudan has claimed represents the aspirations of 3.65 million civil servants.

Though the bureaucratic reforms minister said the government had no plans to entertain Korpri’s demand for raising the civil service retirement age, an about-face is always possible, especially for political reasons. It is an open secret that the bureaucracy is vulnerable to politicization, particularly ahead of elections at both the national and regional levels, even though it is required to remain neutral by law.

Surely the government and the House of Representatives must realize that raising public servants’ retirement age now is untimely.

First and foremost, the civil service is widely perceived as generally unproductive despite continuous reforms. Compared to its middle-income peers, the country’s relatively low rankings on the ease of doing business and corruption perception indexes suggest that the performance of our civil service has not, to some extent, lived up to expectations. In many government offices, red tape remains the norm.

According to Oxford University’s 2024 Blavatnik Index of Public Administration, Singapore has the best-performing civil service, scoring 0.85 on a scale from zero to 1. With a score of 0.61 Inicontrast, Indonesia ranks 38th out of 120 countries surveyed, on par with the Dominican Republic.

Government science professor Djohermansyah Djohan among the critics of the move to raise the civil service retirement age. While some developed Asian countries like Japan and South Korea have increased the age cap for civil servants, this is because they lack new recruits to replace aging employees. In Indonesia, the opposite is the case: The country does not have enough spots for the many job seekers aspiring to become civil servants.

Indonesia’s civil service urgently needs regeneration more than a higher retirement age, especially if this only allows certain people to keep their bureaucratic positions for a longer time. Perhaps the focus should be on enhancing the skills, digital literacy and efficiency of current public servants first, not extending their period of service.

More critically however, raising the retirement age of civil servants poses a significant threat to our demographic bonus, which is projected to peak around 2030 and last until sometime between 2035 and 2040. This period offers a unique chance for accelerated economic growth if the young, burgeoning workforce is productively employed.

Indonesia’s aspiration to become a high-income economy by its centennial in 2045 hinges on sustained high growth driven by improvements in productivity. The potential for innovation and adaptation, often driven by younger generations of digital natives, could be stifled by an older, slower bureaucracy.

Policymakers need to find a smarter way to invest in people and increase productivity, so we are in a strong position when the time comes to realistically talk about changing the retirement age.