UNAIR NEWS– Indonesia has long been known as amiddle income countrywhere the majority of the population has middle income.It makes Indonesia feels overshadowed by themiddle income trapdue to the country’s failure to move up from middle-low to upper-middle income.Although in the past year Indonesia has been categorized as anupper-middle income country,the pandemic situation has made the economic progress of Indonesian people even more threatened.
However, a different view came fromUNAIR ,听., Ph.D.According to him, the pandemic situation actually benefits the innovation climate and creative economy for those smart and innovative individuals.
淧andemic is a tremendous intervening variable. Moreover, it is followed by the composition of the productive age of our society which is more than 60%. This period is the right time to develop the creative economy, “said the youngest UNAIR Professor.
However, according to Prof.Badri, the 23 years of experience of Indonesia to get out of thelower-middle income trap iscaused by low innovation and creative economy.Indonesia has a high productive age, however, the competitiveness of the workforce has decreased from year to year, especially with the vulnerability of 90% of the composition of Indonesia’s population who are in themiddle incomeclass.
Furthermore, jobs of productive age in Indonesia are still concentrated in office work and conventional jobs. The title of Indonesia as one of the largest internet user countries with 150 million users has never really been used as an economic opportunity.
To overcome this, Prof.Badri believes in the termcreativity is the new economy.Today’s economic orientation should no longer rely on natural resources, but creativity andadded value.So Indonesia needs to carry out economic transformation by utilizing innovation, creativity and digitalization.
“So if now there are many young people aspiring to establishtheirownstart-up, it is one of the right steps.Startups can be a solution for countries experiencing amiddle income trap, he explained in a Creative Economy Network webinar held by UNAIR Postgraduate School on Thursday, January 14, 2021.
Reflecting on Singapore and Luxembourg which have high creative class rankings, it turns out that they were able to encourage improvement of the people’s economy through the creative economy andstart-ups.“Indonesia is still ranked 86th with only 7.95% proposition of the creative economy working class,” he added.
Prof. Badri then gave an example of how Indonesia’s top start-up like Go-Jek was not only able to earn fantastic income, but also created jobs for more than 4 million partners of the decacorn start-up.
淪uper creative coressuch as Go-Jek, Grab, Google, Pixar, and others are examples thatstart-upscan bring tremendous economic progress.Thestart-upsgrowth ratewill be linear with economic growth and people’s income, 漵aid the Director of UNAIR Postgraduate School.
Until now, Indonesia has recorded more than 2000 start-up companies. This development made Prof. Badri believes that in the future Indonesia’s creative economy will be even more diverse, although until now the majority is still focused on the food and beverage sector.
Author: Intang Arifia
Editor: Khefti Al Mawalia
