"We should encourage economic innovation, with the support of WIPO, in relation to intellectual property," Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly stated at the Presidential Palace here on Tuesday.
The minister noted that the cooperation would provide advantages to Small and Medium Enterprises regarding intellectual property rights (HAKI).
"Therefore, WIPO continues to encourage it," the minister remarked.
The minister invited WIPO to visit Indonesia to hold better meetings in order to support the national strategy of HAKI.
"In Oct 2016, the Law and Human Rights Ministry and WIPO signed an MoU in Geneva on the national strategy of intellectual property rights.
"During the meeting, we discussed a lot of issues. We want to change from resource-based economy to knowledge-based economy," the minister explained.
The minister cited that Japan has supported the strengthening of the protection of intellectual property rights as an engine of economic growth.
"Intellectual property is the engine of some countrys economic growth, and we must progress toward it," he remarked.
Meanwhile, Minister of Industry Airlangga Hartarto noted that that President Joko Widodo had underlined the development of a digital-based economy.
"The development of a digital-based economy will lead to innovation-based economy. Intellectual property rights become important in innovation-based economy," the minister revealed.
In addition, the minister stated that the development of robot-based industry requires innovation and intellectual property rights.
"WIPO can become one of the pillars of its development," the minister noted.
The utilization of the digital revolution in the economic activities could boost the growth of the economy by seven percent (year-on-year), compared to the current growth rate of around five percent (year-on-year), BI governor earlier said.
"The growth of digital companies has increased significantly both in the trade of goods and services (e-commerce), payment, and financing. The number of internet users who shop online on 2016 has reached 24.74 million people," the Governor of Bank Indonesia, Agus Martowardojo, explained.
For the calculation of BI, during 2016, the users of electronic commerce (e-commerce) had spent Rp75 trillion.
In addition to e-commerce, digital revolution in Indonesia touched the financial sector because the number of financial technology companies in Indonesia grew by 78 percent in the last two years (2015-2016).
However, he noted that the potential of digital revolution and big data services are still very large. Many Indonesians have not received advantages from the digital revolution.
It was seen from the ratio between the number of internet users and the number of people in Indonesia, which was about 51 percent in 2016.
"The figure is still far from our neighboring countries, such as Malaysia at 71 percent and Thailand at 67 percent," he revealed.
The poor quality of internet services and low investment in information technology caused the low ratio between the number of internet users and the number of people in the country.
"IT investment in key sectors contributing to economic growth, such as manufacturing and mining, is still relatively low," he stated.
If the obstacles in the utilization of digital technology can be overcome, the economic digitization can provide added value of US$150 billion to gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025.
In recent years, Bank Indonesia has utilized the optimized big data services to support decision-making process.
Big data services can strengthen decision-making process in monetary, financial markets, financial system stability, payment system, and others.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2017
