VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

In the 2015-2019 period, infrastructure development became one of the priority programs of President Joko Widodo's Working Cabinet and Vice President Jusuf Kalla to improve economic growth and even distribution of development outcomes. The impact of the completion of a number of infrastructure projects, one of which contributed to the improvement of Indonesia's competitiveness.

Increasing Indonesia's competitiveness in 2019 has increased significantly. Based on the 2019 competitiveness rating released by a Swiss-based research institute, IMD World Competitiveness Center, Indonesia's competitiveness shot 11 rankings this year to rank 32 from the previous 2018 ranked 43. Four major indicators measured were economic performance, bureaucratic efficiency, business efficiency, and infrastructure.

The increase in Indonesia's competitiveness ranking is the largest in the Asia Pacific region. In the release, increased competitiveness was due to efficiency in the government sector, as well as progress in the availability of infrastructure and the business climate.

"Even so it is still under Malaysia (ranked 22) and Thailand (ranked 25). If our infrastructure stock is stagnant, the attractiveness of our investment will be inferior compared to neighboring countries, "said Minister of Public Works and Public Housing (PUPR) Basuki Hadimuljono.

The PUPR Minister said infrastructure development was a logical and strategic choice solely to improve Indonesia's competitiveness as well as to catch up. Moreover, Indonesia had experienced an economic crisis which had an impact on postponing and stopping the construction and maintenance of infrastructure. Therefore, since 2015 the government has shifted subsidies to productive spending in the form of infrastructure, health and education development.

However, the impact of infrastructure development policies does not necessarily feel in the short term. "For that we build a lot of infrastructure in Papua, West Papua, NTT, and border areas," he said

Good competitiveness is needed to attract investment both from within and outside the country to increase national production and open jobs that will reduce the number of unemployed. "Inadequate infrastructure will make Indonesian products difficult to compete. "Low connectivity, which results in our logistics costs being more expensive than Malaysia, Singapore or even the Philippines," he said.

Minister Basuki said that in developing connectivity it was carried out in a multimodal synergy, for example the Ministry of Transportation to build ports and airports, the Ministry of PUPR would provide freeway access.

Financing is a challenge for the Government even though the infrastructure budget in the Ministry of PUPR is quite large with an average of more than Rp. 100 trillion, but it has not met the needs. In the five years (2015-2019) the total budget of the Ministry of PUPR was Rp.548.4 trillion which was divided in 2015 by Rp.119.6 trillion, in 2016 amounting to Rp98.1 trillion, in 2017 amounting to Rp106.3 trillion, in 2018 amounting to Rp113.7 trillion and 2019 amounting to Rp110.7 trillion.

Therefore, for infrastructure, the financing of which can involve the community such as toll roads, the development is through investment in business entities. Thus the existing infrastructure budget is optimized for development in border areas, remote areas and community infrastructure such as drinking water, sanitation, suspension bridges, homes for low-income communities, and increasingly expanded service coverage. (Public Relations Ministry of PUPR / EN)