VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Indonesian Vice President Ma'ruf Amin. (ANTARA/HO-Press Bureau of Vice President Secretariat/am/uyu) - 

Indonesian Vice President Ma'ruf Amin has said he hopes the country can become a nation of inventions that is able to master science and technology.

He made the statement at the virtual graduation ceremony of Brawijaya University students on Saturday.

He also said that as a tool, technology can bring either more benefit or disaster.

“Hence, we have to understand how to make technological advancement to bring more benefits,” he remarked.

Changes will always occur in human life, and innovation is the best method to mitigate those changes, he added.

He then urged graduate students to use the knowledge they have obtained and to improve their entrepreneurship skills to create innovations.

Furthermore, Amin said that for Indonesia to become a nation of inventions, its human resources must be inventors — not copiers.

In addition, formal and informal education must aim to increase the knowledge and skills of the country’s human resources, rather than preparing them for pursuing a bachelor's degree, he added.

In addition, funding and incentives must be provided to encourage innovations, he said.

He then took note of the low number of researchers in Indonesia compared to other countries, resulting in a low number of patents filed in the country.

"The number of full-time researchers was only 216 people per one million population in Indonesia in 2016–2018," he said.

Meanwhile, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics for 2016–2018, China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea had 1,307, 2,784, 5,331, and 7,980 researchers per one million population, respectively, in 2018, he pointed out.

"Furthermore, the percentage of graduates of higher education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in Indonesia was also low," Amin added.

Based on the World Bank’s Education Statistics for 2016–2018, the percentage of STEM graduates in Indonesia was only 19.42 percent of the total graduates in the country in 2018, he said.

The figure is lower than for other G20 member countries, such as India and Russia, which had 32.65 percent and 31.06 percent STEM graduates, respectively. in 2018, he added//ANT