Indonesia to boost private sector R&D

Indonesia's new Minister for research, technology and higher education Muhammad Nasir, is making the right noises about boosting R&D. He announced a cut in patent fees for local applicants last week. He also plans encourage private sector research in other ways pointing to a severe imbalance (in Singapore 80% of R&D is private sector vs 25% in Indonesia) leading to Indonesia’s weak technological innovation. Even government funding is too low he said at Rp 8 trillion (USD631 million) a year, or 0.09% of GDP —lower than Singapore (2.6%), Malaysia (1%) and Thailand (0.25 %). His government's goal by 2019 is to reach annual R&D spending of 0.5% of GDP. Another proposal is to draw business into university research.  Never before has Indonesia promised such technological focus.