Vice Chair of Kadin Indonesia for Maritime Affairs, Investment and Foreign Affairs, Shinta Widjaja Kamdani, said one of the keys to achieving a developed Indonesia 2045 is creating competitive human resources.

As is known, Indonesia is projected to experience a demographic bonus in the 2030s with the number of people of productive age reaching 68.3 per cent of the total population. According to him, this is an opportunity that must be utilised by the Indonesian Government to create superior human resources.

"To achieve what is called the vision of a Golden Indonesia in 2045. We need to understand that to achieve it, of course we must focus on quality human resources. That is mandatory," said Shinta at the Global Human Capital (GHC) Summit 2024, in Jakarta, Tuesday (20/8/2024).

Shinta assessed that the enormous potential of the demographic bonus needs to be optimised from 2 sides. First, the Indonesian government needs to provide good labour regulations, so that labour absorption also increases.

"If the industrial sector cannot absorb labour or if the government does not provide good labour regulations, this bonus will also be bad," she said.

He said one of the biggest challenges in Indonesia today is job creation. This year, the government should be able to provide new jobs, at least 3 million new jobs each year.

The low labour absorption is also affected by the flow of investment into Indonesia. So if there is little investment, the labour absorption is automatically low.

"In fact, if we look at the investment that has entered Indonesia, employment has decreased in the last 10 years. So, there is definitely a shift from labour-intensive to capital-intensive and this has an impact on our employment," he said.

Secondly, the Government needs to map education and skills aligned with labour productivity to address human capital skills while promoting lifelong learning.

"We recognise that commitment and human capital need to start with investing in education and skills. We believe that education transformation involves not only preparing competent graduates, but also ensuring that education provides the knowledge and skills required by the labour market," he concluded.