President emphasises implementation of the Article 33 economic blueprint in the 1945 Constitution

Jakarta (ANTARA) – The President emphasised the obligation to implement the national economy blueprint in accordance with Article 33 of the 1945 Constitution (UUD 1945) in a pure and consistent manner to halt the mismanagement of natural resource wealth and to guarantee the prosperity of all Indonesians. “I want to emphasise today my belief that if we implement Article 33 of the 1945 Constitution properly, and carry it out in a pure and consistent manner, our country will have sufficient resources to genuinely ensure that Indonesia will become a prosperous and just nation,” the President said in his address to the plenary session of the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR RI) in Jakarta on Wednesday. According to Prabowo, the founders of the nation laid down the economic foundations in a measured manner, drawing on a long historical experience in the struggle against imperialism, and therefore it should not be replaced by capitalism or neoliberalism. The President warned that deviations from the national economic blueprint have resulted in massive leakage of state wealth through various illegal practices in the domestic sector. “If we implement Article 33 consistently, we will be protected from practices such as under-invoicing, under-counting, and so on; falsification of tonnage and quality of exported products; fraudulent practices against our people and the state; as well as illegal mining, illegal logging, and illegal plantations,” the President said. That situation is seen as the result of an extraordinary systemic failure, with the ratio of government revenue and expenditure to Indonesia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) currently at the lowest level among all G20 member countries. According to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Indonesia’s revenue-to-GDP ratio is only about 11–12 percent of GDP, far behind other developing nations such as Cambodia on 15 percent, India on 20 percent, the Philippines on 21 percent, and Mexico at 25 percent. Indeed, Indonesia is noted for its highly strategic geographic position and its status as the world’s largest exporter of three raw and processed strategic commodities.