We need to be serious in addressing development of digital economy with protection."Jakarta (ANTARA News) - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) said Indonesia is highly potential to develop digital economy that the country should not be lagging behind in its development.
"I see we have big potentials to develop digital economy and the market of digital economy is potential with a population of 250 million of which 94.3 million are internet service users," Jokowi said when presiding over a limited cabinet meeting on digital economy here on Tuesday.
Jokowi said when attending the G20 Summit in China, big nations began to speak loudly about new industrial revolution based on digital economy.
Almost all nations taking part in the summit meeting spoke about digital economy, he said, adding, "We must not be left behind. We must play a role in the process."
The president said he had information that in 2014, sales through e-commerce in Indonesia reached US$2.6 billion with penetration of only 6 percent of the total population.
Whereas e-commerce could help 56 million units of small and medium enterprises (UMKM) which contribute around 55 percent to the countrys GDP.
"Just compared with in China, where the users of e-commerce already reached 30 percent of the population and contribute 20 percent to its GDP," the president said.
The president repeated saying the potential market must not be wasted, adding that he was confident Indonesia could be the largest digital economy in Southeast Asia.
"For that purpose I want acceleration of the implementation of digital economy, otherwise, we would be lagging behind other countries," he said.
As the first step Indonesia should develop world logistic interlink system with existing products in rural areas, he said.
"At the same time we also must make a breakthrough step to strengthen our digital economic players as we see the potentials among our youths in this area," he said.
The president also said he wants that the new comers in digital economy are facilitated including in capital that they could expand.
"Take large scale deregulation to support development of e-commerce industry," he said.
He said training is necessary to improve the skills and capacity of new comers or players to be competitive," he added.
He said a number of Indonesian digital economic players have been bought by foreign companies such as OLX.
He also said he wanted special treatment of new players in digital economy.
"We need to be serious in addressing development of digital economy with protection," he said.
(Uu.H-ASG/B003)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
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