Consultancy urges Indonesia to adopt remote working post-pandemic

INDONESIA could stand to make a bigger shift towards remote working, one consulting firm has said, in a white paper on how the economy can transform post-Covid-19.

The country can build on the pandemic's momentum to establish a digital economy and set up remote working as a standard model, analysts from Kearney argued.

That's even as DBS chief economist Taimur Baig described the Indonesian economy in a Thursday (Dec 3) briefing as the "hardest hit" by Covid-19 in the Asean region.

The team from Kearney noted that remote working models have covered different areas of the enterprise value chain, including real-time production monitoring, preventive maintenance scheduling and robotic logistics in the manufacturing and logistics sector.

"To support ongoing remote working, Indonesia's government and enterprises will need to collaborate to address infrastructure and talent issues," they wrote, while calling for remote working and learning models at the municipal level.

Kearney's report recommended aligning the Indonesian industrial zoning plan with the shift in demand and industry structures caused by Covid-19, as well as strengthening a localised supply chain to cut reliance on imports.

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Meanwhile, DBS economist Radhika Rao said in a report that consumption, corporate restocking and net exports should support the Indonesian economy in 2021.

In the medium term, reforms in a recent omnibus reform package "are imperative to improve the economy's investment appeal amidst shifts in the global supply chain", she added, citing labour laws, corporate tax cuts and lower investment limits.