Govt help needed to promote technology development
Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Indonesia would continue to lag behind other countries in high-tech innovation unless the government improved financial and reward systems for researchers and technology users, a scientist said.
Kurleni Ukar, a research head at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Kurleni Ukar, said difficulty in commercializing local inventions was hampering the development of technology in the country.
Entrepreneurs found it hard to raise funds for the purchase of local inventions.
"One question that interested business people always ask is whether new technologies meet banking requirements for a loan."
"As researchers, we have no idea what people from the banks want. All we do know is that our research should benefit the public and be registered at a patent directorate," Kurleni told The Jakarta Post during a technology exhibition last week.
Kurleni said the government needed to encourage banks to give loans to businesses to buy local technology.
Under Law No. 18/2002 on the national development of science and technology, central and local governments were obliged to promote the development of local technology, including allocating budgets for technological research.
However, the funds allocated for this purpose were minimal, she said.
"We can submit proposals to the Ministry (of Finance) asking for money. It will take time before the proposals are approved. And when we get them, the money is generally insufficient."
To make matters worse, all proceeds from commercialization of the technology had to be given back to the ministry as a non-tax income and were not credited back to successful researchers as funding for new projects, she said.
Another obstacle to the development of local technology was the government's reward system for scientists and academics, Kurleni said.
Most of researchers in Indonesia were government employees. They could get promotions if they taught at universities, wrote scientific papers, or created patents for new technology.
However, most would rather write or teach for promotion as it took longer to develop new technology and get it patented. The patenting process alone took about three years, she said.
The badly enforced intellectual property laws were also discouraging factors.
"Most scientists are not sure there is a reliable system to protect their inventions from being pirated," Kurleni said.
Locally owned patents totaled 1,200, about 5 percent of the total issued by the directorate of patents from 1997 to last year. The remainder belonged to foreigners.
Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand had higher numbers of locally owned patents, she said.