National – Sustainable Development Indonesia director Drajad Wibowo has predicted that Indonesia will have more than 500,000 newly unemployed people this year if the ongoing economic slowdown continues, forcing many factories to lay off their workers.
Drajad said every 1 percent of economic growth in 2014 created 538,000 new jobs on average. "If the slowdown continues, about 500,000 more people will be jobless this year," he said at a discussion in Jakarta on Saturday.
Bank Indonesia has revised down the country's economic growth to between 4.7 and 5.1 percent this year from 5.6 percent stated in the state budget.
Drajad said the sectors that would be affected most by the crisis included the mining, plantation and manufacturing industries. "It means that the problem is serious. The government has to find a solution," he said as quoted by tribunnews.com.
Meanwhile, former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that people had begun to worry about the looming economic crisis.
"When we listen to the voices from various regions, the people have started to worry," said Yudhoyono at a Democratic Party meeting in Cipanas, Bogor, West Java. The meeting of the leaders of the Democratic Party was in preparation for the Dec. 9 regional elections.
Yudhoyono said he had visited a number of regions in Central Java, Yogyakarta and East Java to talk to local people about the slowdown.
Yudhoyono, who is chairman of the Democratic Party, warned that low-income people would suffer more if the economic trend continued. Therefore, he called on the government to seek a solution for the slowdown.
He called on his party to support the government's efforts to address the economic problem. (bbn)