President Jokowi recently announced his second cabinet reshuffle consisting of two merging ministries (Ministry of Education and Culture with Ministry of Research and Technology) and a new Investment Ministry. UGM Communication Science lecturer and Executive Director of Indonesian Presidential Studies (IPS), Nyarwi Ahmad, Ph.D., assessed that the recent reshuffle aimed to restructure the organization of ministries and state institutions and boost performance achievements of the related ministries. Thus, the government could maximize national economic growth and people’s purchasing power during this pandemic.
“This reshuffle model is fairly new and may bring improvement and maintain the rhythm and cohesiveness of the performance of the ministers,” said Nyarwi, Thursday (29/4).
As agreed by the Indonesian House of Representatives, the two ministries were fused into the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology with Nadiem Makarim as the minister, and Bahlil Lahadalia was appointed to lead the newly established Ministry of Investment.
Nyarwi added that through this fusion, Nadiem needed to show the public the kind of innovations and strategies that he would carry out to strengthen Indonesia’s research and technology, especially to leaders and lecturers in Indonesian universities. He should be able to convince the academic community and researchers to create research products that could increase growth during the pandemic, open up employment opportunities, and provide social and economic benefits for the people and encourage more collaboration between the researchers, academics, industry, and society.
“It is not an easy job, of course. Nadiem is required to be more capable of fostering a productive and collaborative research culture and mentality among academics and researchers,” he said.
He also explained that the establishment of the Investment Ministry provided an opportunity for Bahlil to show his competence in optimizing domestic and foreign investments to revive the economic growth of the people. Collaboration with other ministries of the development sector would greatly determine his level of achievement in encouraging foreign investors to invest in Indonesia. He might have to prepare other strategic steps to increase Indonesia’s Global Competitive Index and strengthen positive perceptions of foreign investors about the ease of investing in the country.
“Another challenge is how to manage the role and authority of local governments in investment in certain sectors across Indonesia. Bahlil needs to formulate a good communication pattern and better policy alternatives to overcome possible and existing challenges,” he concluded.
Author: Gusti Grehenson
Photo: Secretariat of the President of the Republic of Indonesia