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From sea sand exports to food estate, economist calls Prabowo's 4 projects 'ticking time bombs'

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Tempo - September 23, 2024

Nabilla Azzahra, Jakarta – Paramadina University economist Wijayanto Samirin said there are four projects of President-elect Prabowo Subianto for the period 2024-2029 that are time bombs waiting to explode and fail. He said Prabowo should learn from the failures of the previous administration and plan thoroughly before implementing these projects.

Wijayanto believes Prabowo's 8% economic growth plan is unrealistic for Indonesia, given the country's high incremental capital-output ratio (ICOR). Wijayanto named two factors contributing to Indonesia's high ICOR under the Jokowi administration: the high-speed rail project, which is seen as having little impact on the economy, and the Nusantara Capital City (IKN), which has been built without careful planning.

For the next administration, Wijayanto predicted that there are several things that "have the potential to become tragedies" due to their characteristics that are similar to the high-speed rail and IKN, he said in a public discussion dubbed "Prabowo's Economic Policy Prospects: Impossible to Grow 8% without Industrialization," held online on Sunday, Sept. 22.

The first major project is the sea sand export, which could cause widespread environmental problems. In fact, the authorization to trade in marine sand had been suspended for 20 years. However, under the new government regulation (PP) No. 26/2023 on the management of sedimentation results in the sea, the export of sediment is allowed again. Jokowi has recently denied that the government had resumed sea sand exports, saying that what was being exported was not sediment.

The second project which Wijayanto said could be a time bomb for Prabowo is the food estate. Jokowi and Prabowo are working on a mega food estate project in Merauke with a size of 2.29 million hectares. On April 19, 2024, when Prabowo had just been confirmed as the president elect, Jokowi signed Presidential Decree No. 15/2024 on the Task Force for Accelerating Sugar and Bioethanol Self-Sufficiency in Merauke Regency.

After a similar project in Kalimantan failed, Wijayanto and a number of other experts predicted that the Merauke project would suffer the same fate.

The next project is the Giant Sea Wall (GSW), which Prabowo proposed to build in Jakarta to protect the northern coast of Java from the threat of rising sea levels. "If this is not implemented properly, it will damage the environment and harm tens of millions of people living in Jakarta and surrounding areas," the economist said. "Something like this needs careful planning before it is implemented."

The fourth project, he said, is the Bandung-Surabaya high-speed train. He said the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed train alone was enough to cause financial difficulties and require the government to issue subsidies.

"If we just want economic growth, the giant sea wall will definitely boost growth. Exports of sea sand will definitely boost GDP growth in the context of exports. Food estates will definitely boost economic growth. However, we must consider the projects' impact on the people," he said.

Source: https://en.tempo.co/read/1919691/from-sea-sand-exports-to-food-estate-economist-calls-prabowos-4-projects-ticking-time-bomb

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