“The government plays a crucial role in engineering economic recovery and regrowth,” he stated during a virtual discussion on 'Productivity 2022: Rebound and Regrowth,' which was moderated by president director of Indonesia’s ANTARA News Agency, Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, here on Tuesday.
Stimulus packages are important, but structural reforms are more critical, strategic, and impressive, according to Kuong.
Hence, he recommended the strategy approach comprising survival, synergy, and sustainability.
“We cannot stand alone, we need to work in synergy,” he stressed.
Moreover, the government should shift from a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis to threats, weaknesses, opportunities, and strengths (TWOS) analysis to recover from the pandemic, Kuong said.
All countries should also embrace the digital revolution, build government 4.0, and deepen domestic, regional, and global integration, he added.
“For example, in ASEAN, I would like to say that the cooperation between ASEAN countries and China and India will benefit more economic recovery and they can regrow two to three percent,” he noted.
In addition, fostering innovation and economic transformation are critical and urgent policy priorities for all countries, he pointed out.
Kuong also mentioned some challenges that countries around the world are facing, such as unpredictability due to risk of COVID-19 outbreaks caused by new variants, policy uncertainty in terms of zero COVID versus living with COVID policy, international cooperation, and geopolitical tensions.
Loss of business activity, efficiency, and synergy, including travel restrictions or strict COVID-19 protocols; global value chain disruptions (production and transport); and global, regional, and domestic disintegration are among some other challenges that he listed.
He also included inflation caused by healthcare costs, cost of production and transport, climate change, and energy transition in the list.
“The challenges are severe but operational,” he remarked.
Reporter: Juwita Trisna Rahayu
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
Copyright © ANTARA 2022
