Mon, 22 Mar 2010

Bekasi (ANTARA News) - Vice President Budiono said that Indonesia must be able to make use of the current transitional demographic dividend to generate its economic growth.

"If the country does not make use of its demographic dividend it will miss the momentum and fail to take advantage of it," the vice president said in meeting with students and educators in Bekasi, West Java, over he weekend.

He said that demographic dividend was a period product which did not always happen but now was taking place in Indonesia and would end in 2025.

In a period of demographic dividend the number of those who are workers or productive groups is bigger than the number of their unproductive dependents or unproductive groups.

He said that Indonesia as a nation was undergoing a shifting generation in its history. In this case, Indonesia will enjoy the benefit of its shifting generation in its demographic developments.

"There is a kind of shifting generation in our demographic developments where the number of productive persons is higher than those unproductive ones such as children and senior citizens," the vice president said.

He said that the shifting of this generation was now taking place where old generation was being replaced by the new one. This is comparable to the flow of water in a river where in life there is birth, growth and death.

"This is a history process that could not be avoided. We will handed over the baton to children who are entering the shifting flow of the new generation," he said.

In order to optimize the shifting generation which would run naturally, children should be prepared because they would play the role in developing the nation.

Parents, educators, the state and the people as a whole must create a condition where the potentials of children could develop so that they would later serve as the nation`s leaders.