Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The National Winning Team (TPN) Ganjar Pranowo-Mahfud Md said their champions did not rely on infrastructure development to achieve the 7% economic growth target. Executive Secretary of TPN Ganjar-Mahfud, Heru Dewanto, said that during the 9 years of President Joko Widodo’s government, infrastructure development had been quite massive.

“We already have infrastructure, you could say that in the last 9 years we have built quite massive infrastructure,” said Heru in the Your Money Your Vote event on CNBC Indonesia, Wednesday (8/11/2023).

However, according to Heru, this infrastructure development has not been able to turn on the production tools and engines of the Indonesian economy. He said that Indonesia’s economy continues to grow, but this growth is mostly due to infrastructure development.

In fact, he said, infrastructure development should be a tool to achieve goals, not a development goal itself. “What is the aim, to move the economy, to move our industry, this is something that has not yet been seen,” he said.

Heru said that Ganjar-Mahfud had a strategy to solve this problem. The first way, he said, is to improve infrastructure connectivity in Indonesia with global infrastructure. Once the connectivity is complete, he said Ganjar will prepare an economic engine that can run fast.

“If it’s like the toll road with a speed limit of 350 kilometers/hour has been completed, we need cars with the ability to run 350 km/hour too, if it’s only 100 km/hour why are we building a toll road with a speed limit of 350?” he said.

Heru said Ganjar would rely on Mahfud Md to make Indonesia’s economic engine faster. The way to do this is by utilizing Mahfud’s experience in legal and bureaucratic reform. He said these reforms were urgently needed to provide legal certainty in Indonesia. With guaranteed legal certainty, it is hoped that investment will flow rapidly into the country, which will ultimately support economic growth.

“Mr Mahfud, we really hope that we can create legal certainty. Earlier there was a question about where the investment would come from. Legal certainty, bureaucratic reform and bureaucratic digitalization are our steps to speed up the economic engine,” he said.

TPN Ganjar-Mahfud’s Young Director of Politics 5.0, Reyhan Noor, added that the pair would also maximize economic potential which has not been exploited so far. One of them is the potential for an environmentally friendly economy. He said that by working on this economic sector, rapid economic growth is guaranteed.

“So it’s not just improving what already exists, but expanding what we haven’t optimized, such as the green economy and blue economy,” he said.

[Gambas:Video CNBC]

(haa/haa)