Vice President: Research Investment In Indonesia Is Still Lagging Behind

Vice President (Vice President) KH Ma'ruf Amin. ANTARA/HO-BPMI Setwapres

JAKARTA - Vice President Ma'ruf Amin said Indonesia's investment in the research sector is still lagging behind some advanced industrial countries, such as South Korea, Japan and the United States.

"The intensity of research and development investment in Indonesia is far behind when compared to advanced industrial countries," said the Vice President at the Indonesia Economic Outlook 2022 National Seminar, quoted by Antara, Monday, February 7.

Based on data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) in 2018, gross domestic expenditure on research and development or gross domestic expenditure on research and development (GERD) in Indonesia is only around 0.23 percent.

This figure is much smaller than South Korea, which has invested in the research and development sector at 4.81 percent, Japan at 3.26 percent, and the United States at 2.84 percent of its GDP in 2018.

The limited value of investment in research and development in Indonesia is affected by the small number of human resources (HR) researchers.

From similar data sources, the number of full-time equivalent researchers in Indonesia is only 216 people per 1,000,000 inhabitants. Meanwhile, in some countries it has reached more than 1,000 researchers.

In China, there are 1,307 researchers per 1,000,000 population, while Russia has 2,784 researchers, Japan has 5,331 researchers, and South Korea has 7,980 researchers.

Based on the small investment value and the small number of researchers in Indonesia, innovation in Indonesia is still not a priority in development.

"The implication of these factors is that innovation has not become a daily practice in many fields of life, especially in the economic field," he said.