JAKARTA – The emergency regulation in lieu of the job creation law will come into force in three months at the latest after being enacted by the House of Representatives, Chief Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto said in an exclusive interview with BTV news channel aired on Monday evening.
The emergency regulation was issued after the job creation law was frozen by the Constitutional Court in November 2021 following a legal motion by several non-governmental groups who argued that the law didn’t involve sufficient public participation in the making and that there were changes in the wording after its enactment.
The court gave the government and the House two years to make revisions and improvements in the law within two years or it is abolished permanently, and Airlangga said the regulation in lieu of the law was the implementation of the mandate.
“This is currently being handled by the parliament and after three months at the latest, the emergency regulation will come into force. There’s nothing to worry about,” Airlangga told BTV’s Ellyza Hasan.
With a pro-government coalition controlling above 80 percent of seats, the House is expected to become a rubber stamp for the enactment of the regulation in lieu of the job creation law, which made history after it was introduced as an omnibus for the first time in history carrying provisions on nearly all economic aspects to improve the country’s investment climate and produce millions of new jobs.
It regulates heavily-streamlined procedures for obtaining business licenses, harmonization of tax regulations, land bank, and long-term investment or the sovereign wealth funds to build the new national capital Nusantara in East Kalimantan, among many other things, Airlangga said.
He claimed that during the G20 Summit in Bali late last year, world leaders praised the Indonesian government for making use of the extremely restricted global economic activities and travels during the Covid-19 pandemic to conduct “structural reforms” at home and improve investment climate through massive amendment and harmonization of overlapping regulations under the omnibus law.
“Indonesia is one of only a few countries in the world to do so during the pandemic,” Airlangga said.
“Indonesia is gaining momentum due to growing global confidence in our leadership after we successfully hosted the G20 Summit. They have hope for us and this is a small window of opportunity that we must grab in a limited time. We cannot just sit and relax,” Airlangga said as he explained why the government was very insistent on pursuing a comprehensive investment and job creation law.
Airlangga quoted remarks by International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva who last year described Indonesia as “remains a bright spot in a worsening global economy”.
However, if no immediate actions are taken, new foreign investments will go to other countries, Airlangga said.
During the interview at the BTV studio in Jakarta, he also dismissed allegations that the emergency regulation heavily favors foreign investors, saying that it provides a large number of provisions favoring domestic micro, small, and medium enterprises.
“It provides a large breathing space for MSMEs and encourages them to enter the formal sector, in which their workers are protected by social insurance,” Airlangga said.
The main idea behind the issuance of the comprehensive law is to ensure a stable domestic investment climate in the face of global uncertainties due to the pandemic and ongoing war in Ukraine, he said.