Coordinating Minister Airlangga: Digitalization Is A Golden Opportunity For Indonesian Youth In The New Normal Era

Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, Airlangga Hartarto. (Photo: Doc. Setkab)

JAKARTA - The government has consistently cooperated with all parties, both upstream and downstream, in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, so that the national active cases on October 4, 2021 have dropped to 31,054 cases. This figure is much lower than the highest in July 2021 which reached up to 570,000 cases.

"This proves that the handling of COVID-19 through the PPKM mechanism from upstream to downstream as well as centralized isolation along with hospital preparations and vaccinations are the keys to reducing cases," said Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto in the National Cadre Fellowship Program Webinar, Tuesday, October 5.

The decrease in cases through the implementation of PPKM, said Coordinating Minister Airlangga, opened up opportunities for national economic recovery to move again. In this situation, the public is advised to remain vigilant and not to be neglected and the implementation of the 3M health protocol (wearing masks, maintaining distance, washing hands) must continue to be intensified.

"The 3T measures (testing, tracing, and treatment) are also continuously being carried out because they can track epidemiologically who is affected or affected by COVID-19 and who is their close contact. This needs to continue to be tracked so that we can cut the spread of COVID-19," said Coordinating Minister Airlangga .

Furthermore, Coordinating Minister Airlangga said that economic growth would depend on controlling the pandemic, appropriate policy responses, including Fiscal Policy and Monetary Policy, to ensure a stronger recovery process. The government continues to encourage job creation to reduce poverty and support those affected by layoffs.

"We all know that all countries are trying to control the COVID-19 pandemic, including Indonesia. We are grateful that in the second quarter of 2021 the Indonesian economy grew by 7.07 percent (yoy). This proves that we can get out of recession and it is estimated that at the end of our year can grow between 3.7 to 4.5 percent," said Coordinating Minister Airlangga.

On this occasion, Coordinating Minister Airlangga asked the youth to continue to play an active role in the community. Participate in various activities including vaccination activities and economic recovery activities through MSMEs. The government has also prepared People's Business Credit which can be used by young people to become entrepreneurs.

"Post pandemic is a new era that we know as the digitalization era. This era has a huge market potential. Young people as future leaders need to prepare themselves and learn a lot from the COVID-19 situation. This is a golden opportunity," said Coordinating Minister Airlangga.

The youth are expected to take advantage of the opportunities that exist because all development program activities, entrepreneurship programs are reset. The future is the new normal era and one of the main mainstays is digitalization.

"Youth must actively do self-learning or learn continuously in order to be able to adapt to new situations, new jobs, new technological developments, so that economic activity will be productive and young people will become the backbone in the new economic era," concluded the Coordinating Minister. Airlangga.