Bappenas Calls Digital Products Contributing 60 Percent Of GDP Asia Pacific

Illustration of economic predictions (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - The National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) stated that digital transformation has a strategic position.

Meanwhile, around 60 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in Asia-Pacific countries is obtained from digital products or services.

"You can imagine how the portion of digitalization is to support strategic sectors," said Bappenas Coordinator of Ecosystems and Utilization of ICT, Directorate of Electricity, Telecommunications and Information Bappenas, Andianto Haryoko quoting Antara, Friday, March 2.

Within the framework of the 2020-2024 national strategy policy, Indonesia is said to have three pillars of digital transformation. The three pillars include digital infrastructure, digital utilization and supporting strengthening or enablers.

In using digital, he continued, one of the strategic sectors is micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), especially in the category of small and micro medium enterprises considering that this sector has a significant strategic value for Indonesia.

Even so, Indonesia's position, which is ranked first with the largest digital economy value in Southeast Asia, is not accompanied by the value of the digital economy per capita which is in fourth position.

Based on data in 2020, Indonesia's digital economy value is 44 billion US dollars. The value of the digital economy per capita is 162.8 US dollars, below Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

"We are still consumers, not producers, not players. So other Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines and Singapore still see us as consumers, not producers. We need to pay close attention to this," said Andianto.

If the MSME sector dominates the national economic structure by 99 percent and contributes to Indonesia's GDP of almost 61 percent digitally transformation, he considers these efforts to increase added value for state and regional income.

Furthermore, he considered that there were two very influential factors in digitizing MSMEs, namely technology and human resources/digital talent.

"We will support these two things, how to develop digital talent, how can we adopt technology, be rolled out and implemented in Indonesia", said the Coordinator of Ecosystems and Utilization of ICT Bappenas.