AHY Unveils Government's Grand Mission: Transmigration Areas to Become New Economic Hubs
Jakarta, VIVA – Coordinating Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono (AHY) has affirmed that the future development of transmigration areas will rest on empirical data gathered directly from the field.
According to him, the research results of the participants of the Patriot Expedition 2026 will serve as one of the government’s footholds in formulating more precisely targeted development policies. AHY made the remarks when seeing off the 1,476 participants of the Patriot Expedition 2026 team.
The participants, comprising students, researchers and professors from ten partner state universities together with hundreds of campuses at home and abroad, will be deployed to 53 transmigration areas, particularly in eastern Indonesia.
“We want to build transmigration areas that become new magnets for investment, economic growth and improved community welfare. That is where the contribution of these students becomes very important, because the recommendations they produce will be born from real conditions on the ground,” said Coordinating Minister AHY, quoted on Thursday, 30 July 2026.
AHY explained that the participants will continue the mapping and research begun during the Patriot Expedition 2025. They are tasked with identifying both the potential and the challenges in transmigration areas to support the development of the agricultural, plantation and tourism sectors, the creative economy, and natural resource management through industrialisation and downstream processing.
The research results are expected to provide strategic input for the government in developing each area according to its own characteristics and potential.
On that occasion, AHY also stressed that the paradigm of transmigration development has now changed. The government, he said, is no longer oriented solely towards population relocation, but towards building transmigration areas capable of becoming new centres of economic growth.
“Whereas in the past the paradigm was to move people off the island of Java, now the paradigm has shifted to how to build these areas so that they become attractive destinations for population movement, investment inflows, and sustainable development and economic growth,” he said.
AHY expressed hope that the participants’ observations can be academically accountable whilst complementing government data in policy formulation.
“Hopefully, when academic input meets strategic policy at the central level, policies that are truly effective and can be implemented well will emerge. Empirical data from the field will be an important foundation in formulating accurately targeted policies,” concluded Coordinating Minister AHY.