By: Prabowo Subianto [excerpted from “National Transformation Strategy: Towards Golden Indonesia 2045,” page 143, 4th softcover edition]
In addition to our abundant natural resources, our country is also blessed with a large population, most of which is currently of productive age.
In fact, the median age of the Indonesian population as of 2022 was 29 years. This means that the majority of Indonesians are young, energetic, and productive.
We are also blessed with our culture that highly values the institution of marriage and family. While the population growth rates of other countries have already fallen below 1%, our population growth rate currently remains above 1% per year – specifically, at 1.08% per year.
This means that with a population of 280 million, we’re growing by 1.08% annually, or adding an extra 3 million people every year. That’s like creating three new cities the size of Bogor’s population annually.
However, as with other countries, the more prosperous a nation becomes, the more likely its population growth rate is to decline. According to Bappenas, our population growth rate will decrease to 0.43% by 2045.
This implies that although we currently have a large population, and most of our people are young and productive, our time is limited. We must quickly leverage the potential of our human resources before we become a nation where the majority of the population is elderly, like Japan today.
