Indonesia reveals digital economy targets

The Indonesian Government has set targets for agriculture, SMEs, connectivity and tech startups as part of its digital economy plan.

“We are aiming to create 200 startups every year, plan more entrepreneurship programmes and bring in more mentors from Silicon Valley or around the world,” Lis Sutjiati, Special Advisory Staff to the Minister of Communication and Information Technology said at a conference this week.

The 2020 Go Digital Vision is also targeting to get one million local farmers and fishermen to sell and promote their produce online.

“The agricultural sector has contributed 10.58% to national GDP growth and this programme can help them to increase their income too,” she added, according to Digital News Asia. In addition, it has set a goal of eight million SMEs using digital technologies by 2020.

“Only 9% of SMEs in Indonesia are digital, and 80% of them are only familiar with the usage of social media. With this, we can see the huge potential in local SME to go digital,” Lis said.

Connectivity is another key part of the plan, and Indonesia aims to set up broadband in 187 remote municipalities across the country.

As part of this plan, the country aims to help create 1,000 local tech startups to be valued at a total of US$10 billion. Indonesia wants to become the biggest digital economy in the region, targeting US$130 billion online transactions by 2020.

It launched a National E-Commerce Roadmap in November last year. The government is drawing lessons from other countries as it implements this.

“We learned from other countries such as the US and China that the number of e-commerce players keep increasing with the help of the government. The government has to evolve policy imperatives aligned to the dynamic nature of the digital economy,” Lis said.

During the launch last year, Indonesia identified seven areas of focus: education and human resources, funding, logistics, tax, communications infrastructure, consumer protection, and cyber security.