Moving the Capital Will Promote Equality: Ministry

TheIndonesia.id - Ministry of Finance’s Fiscal Policy Agency (BKF) said moving Indonesia’s capital to East Kalimantan will contribute to the promotion and improvement of social equality in the country.

Head of the Agency Febrio Kacaribu said the implication of the decision will be massive to the effort to improve national prosperity.

“The development of the new capital will create enormous implication to equal distribution of national welfare,” Kacaribu said on Thursday, January 20, as reported by Antara.

And the causal effect works in parallel with the commitment to bridge the gap between Indonesians based on their income and region. The majority of economic activities take place in Java island, and according to the Agency, Java and Sumatra’s gross regional domestic product dominated national GDP by up to 80 percent from 1983 to 2018.

Therefore, moving the capital is seen as a strategic project to help reducing the difference, as it’s believed to become a new source for economic growth that will accelerate equality in the regions surrounding the new capital.

In 2019, President Joko Widodo announced the plan to move Indonesia’s capital from Jakarta to North Penajam Paser and Kutai Kartanegara regencies in East Kalimantan province, and he cited overpopulation in Jakarta as one of the main considerations behind the decision.

“The burdens on Jakarta and Java island in terms of population density, traffic, and air and water pollution must be solved immediately,” Jokowi said in August 2019.

And on Monday, Minister of National Development Planning Suharso Monoarfa announced that Nusantara has been chosen by President Joko Widodo to become the name of the new capital, which is still in development.

According to the Minister, Nusantara was selected because it’s a widely recognizable name, nationally and globally, and has been associated with Indonesia for a long time. The word, which means archipelago, is also considered to be the perfect representation of the archipelagic Indonesia with its rich diversity.