Indonesia Still Lacks Mainstay Products To Face AEC

Jakarta, Oct 10 (Antara) - Indonesia needs more mainstay products in order to compete in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), Executive Chairman of the Indonesian Communications and Information Technology Council (ICITC)Ilham Habibie has said. "We in Indonesia still lack mainstay goods as local champion products. We should design such products like Japan`s Toyota cars, or like what South Korea has done with its technology and information product," Ilham Habibie said here on Friday. He said that in order to create local champion products a supporting system is needed which is impossible to be done by a private company. Standardization by the government is a must. With regard to standardization in the development of a product, regulation is an important factor and the standard should already be made available before the product is produced, he said. This should serve as a regulation for regional governments to develop mainstay products which will be released to the market, Ilham explained. He said that the development of products started from the creation of a workable idea into the creation of a prototype through an incubation process. In these stages, what is needed is not funding but guidance. "We can take an example from the United States. It is successful in the first phase by providing guidance. Usually, the results of guidance given to academicians in Indonesia are different because they do not understand risks in the fields such as delays, macro economic changes and in consistent regulations," he stressed. In the face of the ASEAN free trade, Indonesia has prepared a master plan for the acceleration and expansion of its economic development (MP3EI). The scheme focuses on the development of infrastructure. Ilham said this scheme is good yet it is lacking implementation. "All infrastructural facilities the government is planning to build are good. Implementation is thus a keyword. It should all be in the hands of the government, not in the private sector. The government should be responsible for the construction of the infrastructure," he added.