Qodari affirms President's commitment to return economic system to 1945 Constitution

Head of the National Communication Agency (Bakom) Muhammad Qodari has affirmed that President Prabowo Subianto is committed to overhauling Indonesia’s economic system by returning it to the mandate of Article 33 of the 1945 Constitution. “The President truly intends to overhaul it. Everything is to be returned to Article 33 of the 1945 Constitution. How to implement it? That is a technocratic problem,” Qodari said at the Bisnis Indonesia Forum in Jakarta on Wednesday. Qodari stated that the transformation towards a natural resource-based industrial nation is one of the government’s agendas to realise the Golden Indonesia 2045 vision. According to him, the government is striving to process natural resources domestically to increase added value, create jobs, and strengthen technological mastery. Qodari said the government is also proposing the establishment of a National Industrial Zone Council led directly by the president and vice president to strengthen cross-sector coordination in industrial zone development. “The message is clear: the issue of industrial zones, which has been too hampered by extensive cross-sector coordination, will be handled at the highest level,” he said. Furthermore, Qodari added, the government continues to push for the strengthening of the downstreaming ecosystem from upstream to downstream, including plans to develop the electric vehicle industry and a national car by leveraging the domestic market potential of approximately one million units per year. Qodari relayed Prabowo’s view that Indonesia must be able to produce a national car given the substantial four-wheel vehicle market. “He said, ‘Indonesia sells nearly one million cars a year. How can we not have a national car? Can we not capture a captive market of 300,000 or 400,000?’ That is what he conveyed,” Qodari said. He noted the government is also working to strengthen human resource capacity in technology through a partnership between Tara Indonesia and ARM from the United Kingdom to train 15,000 semiconductor chip design engineers. According to him, the first wave of training involving 1,000 engineers commenced in May 2026 in Jakarta. Qodari said these various programmes are part of the government’s efforts to strengthen industrial downstreaming, technological independence, and economic sovereignty in accordance with the constitutional mandate.