Erick Thohir Calls Competing Country Not Wanting Indonesia To Be Fast Rich

JAKARTA - SOE Minister Erick Thohir revealed that a number of countries do not want Indonesia's economic conditions to quickly creep up. Meanwhile, Indonesia's trade balance in 2022 has reached 51 billion US dollars.

This is in response to the results of a virtual survey by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) regarding the public's response to current economic conditions.

"Our exports also continue to increase. This is what our competing countries are afraid of because until 2045 we are said to be in the top 4 of the world economy. Well, they have read this data. Therefore, they are slowing down, the term should not be rich quickly, lah, Indonesia," said Erick, Sunday, January 22.

In the G20 line of countries, the country's economic growth is in second place with a value of 5 percent, and above the world's economic growth average. The growth of Indonesia's economy also occurred when European countries experienced a slowdown in economic growth.

Erick views that one of the factors in economic growth in Indonesia is the government's efforts to increase downstreaming of natural resource industries such as mining products.

"This is why it started in a new policy in 2017-2018, starting to produce results when downstreaming of natural resources must occur in Indonesia," explained Erick.

Erick admitted that the government's efforts to downstream were not as smooth as expected. One of the problems that occurred was a dispute with the European Union regarding the policy of prohibiting exports and downstreaming Indonesian nickel ore.

This lawsuit was filed by the European Union as a reaction to Indonesia's decision to stop exporting raw nickel. Now, the government has filed an appeal against the decision of the World Trade Organization (WTO) panel on December 12, 2022.

"Although we are currently WTO again, whether it's nickel, palm oil, even yesterday IU was creating a green industry plan. What does that mean, they want to slowly close our market. This is the dynamics that occurs because if we look at it, the economic data (world) is towards recession," he said.