There are at least 3 (three) good news on Indonesia which might make the government flattered.
The latest good news is Indonesia: The Next Silicon Valley?. The title is self-explanatory. Wow!
Foreign companies and investors start buying local start-ups. Yahoo bought locally-made Foursquare-like Koprol; Chicago-based Groupon took over e-commerce platform disdus.com, and so did East Ventures, a Singaporean and Japanese company to Tokopedia . Several investors from Hong Kong and China, Singapore, United States and Japan reportedly invest to several Indonesian start-ups. Even the lucrative cigarettes industries have eyes for the dotcom companies.
Not long time ago, the second good news coming from BBC survey that Indonesia is the best place for entrepreneurs to start a business. Wow!
The survey asked for question: (1) valuation of creativity/innovation in own country, (2) difficulty to start own business in country, (3) valuation of people who start own business, (4) ease of putting ideas into practice.
And the result is Indonesia topped the chart outdoing USA, Canada, India and Australia.
Previously, the third good news and repeatedly discussed is Goldman Sach’s report entitled The N-11: More Than an Acronym paint the bright picture of Indonesia.
After introducing BRIC that stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2003, Goldman Sach conceived the notion of N-11, Next Eleven consist of Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey, and Vietnam. The main reason of this selection is based on large population beyond the BRICs and, to a lesser degree, consistent high growth. To cut the story short, in 2050 Indonesia’s GDP will be the world’s 7th largest surpassing G7’s Japan, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada and Italy.
However, later the expectation proved “wrong” as Vivanews report this. It turns out Indonesia bests the Goldman Sach’s oracles. The estimation of Indonesia’s GDP in 2010, USD 410 billion, but the realization as for November 2010 was more than USD 700 billion.
Despite the good news, some attentions must be paid.
First, Indonesia’s information technology development appears promising, however, we have yet Silicon Valley-like place. IT success story usually begins with combination of talented human resources and supporting environment. That’s why India developed Bengaluru, Taiwan built Hsinchu Science and Industrial Park or even Malaysia promoted Multimedia Super Corridor.
Second, BBC survey might be wrong, because the result is stark contrast with the World Bank data on Doing Business. According to World Bank’s 2011 report, Indonesia’s ranking was down instead of up. In 2010, the ranking is 115 and now 121 out of 183 countries or getting down 6 points.
Last, GDP size is not automatically indicated well-being. And the very report also shows GDP per capita, even for the BRICs, except for Russia, is still in middle income group in 2050.
Anyway, I fully agree that good news is better than bad one.
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