Education – next frontier of Singapore-Indonesian cooperation?

INDONESIA has much going for it at the moment. Its economy is on a sound footing, it has a growing middle class, and fiscally prudent policies have enabled the government to invest heavily in infrastructure over the past decade.

But while its physical infrastructure has improved vastly, the same cannot be said about its soft infrastructure, in particular its human capital. While the populous country has a large labour pool, its talent pool is relatively small. This is especially evident in the fast-growing digital sector where, according to the country’s Ministry of Communications and Informatics, Indonesia has an annual shortfall of 600,000 digital talents.

A recent survey by Google and Economist Impact found that around 60 per cent of Indonesian employees consider digital skills the most important to acquire. If the future of Indonesia’s economy is digital, then Indonesians are highly aware of the need to upgrade their digital skills.