Habibie wants more graduates
JAKARTA (JP): State Minister of Research and Technology B.J. Habibie said yesterday that the various "strategic industries" which he supervises need more top Indonesian technical graduates in order to flourish.
The 10 companies which operate under the Agency for the Supervision of Strategic Industries (BPIS) currently have only 3,967 university graduates of technical studies, or a mere eight percent, out of total employees of more than 45,000, Habibie said during a hearing with the House of Representatives
These state enterprises could do with more technical graduates, he told the House's Commission I, which deals with national security issues.
The majority of the employees of the 10 companies are non- technical university graduates and undergraduates.
"Ideally there should be at least 10 percent university graduates with technical background working in the state-owned enterprises under BPIS," he said.
The 10 enterprises under BPIS supervision are PT IPTN (aircraft manufacture), PT PAL (shipbuilding), PT Pindad (arms manufacture), PT Dahana (industrial explosive manufacture), PT Krakatau Steel, PT Boma Bisma Indra (energy and factory equipment manufacture) PT Barata Indonesia (heavy duty and agricultural equipment manufacture), PT INKA (locomotive manufacture), PT INTI (telecommunications) and PT LEN Industri (electronics and electric components).
Habibie said Indonesia needed more highly-skilled workers to deal with the rapidly changing technology.
"We have to develop our workers' skills and knowledge in order to deal with the growth of technology in the future," he said.
Habibie said that if Indonesia was capable of producing more technology graduates, the country would be well placed to compete with any nation in the world, in part because Indonesians would be willing to accept lower salaries.
He said that Indonesia must seize the opportunity presented by the rapid economic growth that the Asia-Pacific region is currently experiencing.
He cited a forecast by the Deutsche Bank which said that, by the year 2019, Asia's new growing economies, including Indonesia, will account for more than 50 percent of the world's gross domestic product. Japan, the United States and Europe together will only account for 40 percent and African and Latin American countries the other 10 percent, Habibie quoted the study as predicting. (imn)