Indonesia outlines steps to survive from crisis, spur economic growth

JAKARTA, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Indonesian government has outlined plans to survive from the crisis and to comply with its economic growth target initially set at 5.5 percent in 2010, among others, by initiating a re-industrialization, an Indonesian senior official said here on Tuesday.

Speaking at a seminar entitled "Indonesia's Future Economic: Response to the 2008 Global Economic Crisis" held here, Indonesian Foreign Investment Coordinating Minister Muhammad Lutfi said that the current government led by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has set three steps to improve national economic growth that would be implemented in the president's second term.

"Starting from 2009, the new government would make efforts to create more people in the middle class community, create a larger production system and implement a re-industrialization in Indonesia," the minister said in his address at the seminar.

Lutfi said that the creation of more middle class in the country and a larger production system are aimed at improving the savings and increasing demands at home as the middle class community is identified as working people with significant savings with several extra basic needs for their families.

"The re-industrialization step is aimed at providing more value added to the products created by producers in the country. Particularly for this step, the government has drafted plans to support it," Lutfi said, adding that the supporting steps that could be implemented include tax holiday, government's guarantee, liquidity assistance and the combination of all that steps.

Lutfi said that by implementing those steps, Indonesia, along with South Africa which has demonstrated tremendous economic growth in the last few years, could be submitted in the world's emerging economy country group BRIC joined initially by Brazil, Russia, India and China, to change the group's name into BRIICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa).