Regions Must Follow Up Policy Packages: President

Jakarta (Antara Bali) - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) asked regional governments to follow up and implement various economic policy packages through regional government regulations.

"Regional governments should follow up these packages and implement them through regional government regulations and bylaws. It should not happen that regional government adversely produce regulations which hamper the implementation of the policy packages," President Jokowi said when closing the Apkasi Investment Trade International Summit (AITIS) 2016 here on Saturday.

The government has issued a series of economic policy packages from package 1 to package 12 since last September to boost investment in the country.

Jokowi appreciated the holding of the AITIS in an effort to increase synergy between Jakarta and the regions in the current competition era.

"One of the key to winning competition is the synergy between the central government and regional administrations. It is useless for the government to conduct major reforms if there is no synergy between the central and regional governments," he said.

He said that the government was now focusing on two priority things, namely deregulation and acceleration of infrastructure development.

"We need deregulation because we are a big country but our development is being hampered by our own regulations. There are 42,000 regulations in the form of Government Regulations (PP), Presidential Regulations, Ministerial Regulations and bylaws. With numerous regulations, we could not act fast while global changes take place speedily," he said. (WDY)