Vice President Jusuf Kalla on Thursday reminded the people of the need to improve self-reliance.
"Actually, we have the capacity to be a self-reliant nation. For this part, we must be mentally prepared to implement policies we have made," he said at the 1st Indonesian Conference on Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Small Business (ICIES) here.<>
"This nation must be encouraged to become self-reliant. It is not enough to merely make a call," he said.
He said when the nation became self-reliant in the energy sector, for instance, the government would no longer have to spend a great deal of funds on electricity subsidy.
"Electricity subsidy is large because many power plants are diesel oil-fueled rather than coal-fueled," he said.
He said although Indonesia was endowed with abundant natural resources it was still lagging behind other nations. "This is because of our habit of prefering the services of other nations to relying on our own capacity," he said.
"To build an airport we still call French contractors. In fact, if we are willing to, we can build better and cheaper airports ourselves," he said.
He wondered why most students wanted to become civil servants on the grounds they would receive pensions when they were retired. In fact, the pension they would receive was only one-third of their salaries.
"Better efforts will result in better, cheaper products. And all these can be achieved through know how and experience. I am convinced the younger generation can do that," he said. (ant/dar)
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