Govt told to create action plan to boost ICT sector growth

Govt told to create action plan to boost ICT sector growth

Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government needs to formulate a definitive action plan for
the country's information and communications technology (ICT)
sector in order to speed up its growth and utilization, industry
players have said.

The action plan should include incentives so that a wider
public can own computers and gain access to the Internet.

"ICT in a developing country like Indonesia needs the
government's support -- in the form of concrete action, not just
a political will," Indonesian Internet Service Providers
Association (APJII) secretary-general Heru Nugroho told The
Jakarta Post over the weekend.

The first and most crucial step, Heru said, was to put ICT
under one roof as in other countries.

"It should not be like now, where information, communications,
and research all come under the purviews of different
ministries," he said. "It should at least be the responsibility
of one coordinating minister."

The government should then take measures to drive down the
price of Internet access and to expand the use of computers as
the expense of accessing the Internet and a lack of computers
remained the main obstacles to the growth of Internet usage here.

The government needed to pay attention to the development of
ICT infrastructure as the lack of infrastructure was the main
reason why Internet access in the country was still expensive.

"The Internet in Indonesia would be best served by a
combination of cable, satellite and wireless technologies," he
said. "It should also be developed as part of the Internet
backbone to avoid the need for leasing expensive bandwidth from
other countries."

Heru suggested that the government provide subsidies,
especially to schools, so that they could buy computers and enjoy
cheap Internet access.

"They could also negotiate with proprietary software producers
to sell their products at affordable prices to the schools, or
encourage the use of open source software," he said.

Indeed, the government began to do this when it launched the
"One School One Lab" program last November, and the "Indonesia
Goes Open Source" program in June.

Heru explained that if such actions were not taken, then
Indonesia's ICT industry would never experience the kind of
growth it has experienced in other countries, where their
governments fully supported the ICT sector.

The APJII, which has some 130 members, expects the number of
Internet users in the country to reach 12 million by the end of
this year.

Although the figure this would represent a 50 percent rise
from 2003, it would still account for just 5 percent of the
country's 220 million population -- far from the target set by
the World Summit on the Information Society, which expects to see
50 percent of the population having Internet access by 2015.

Elsewhere, Indonesian Computer Business Association
(Apkomindo) chairman G. Hidayat Tjokrodjojo expressed the hope
that the government would cut import tariffs on computer
components so as to make the price of computers more affordable.

"It would also encourage the local computer assembling
industry," he said.

Although locally assembled computers account for some 60
percent of annual computer sales, their components are imposed
with tariffs ranging between 5 percent and 20 percent, while
similarly imported built-up computers are not.

Apkomindo is expecting to see sales of 1 million computers by
the end of this year, up 30 percent from the 750,000 sold last
year.

Hidayat also hoped that the government would help finance
Apkomindo's "Personal Computer Ownership Initiative" -- a project
to supply 100,000 computers priced at a low US$300 each to
schools and local government offices.

"We are not expecting the government to subsidize the compo
nent suppliers, but to help the recipients with their initial
purchases of the low-cost computers," he said.