NGAIRE WOODS: A big welcome to our Deans Forum today why don't you join me and just giving a really warm welcome to Gita Wirjawan. now as always I'll start with a couple of questions which will just give you a little bit of a background on our guest today and then turn it to you for your for your as always brilliant questions So Gita, you did a bachelor in Business Administration at University of Texas. actually a whole bunch of degrees which took you into what could only be described as a glittering private sector career starting as an auditor and then going through the top Banks, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan. and then, and this is the decision t hat we're all focused on in this school, you decide to join government. First as chair of an investment authority for Indonesia, where in quite a short space of time you almost quadrupled the investment coming into Indonesia. so just two questions on this, what made you decide to go into public service? a choice that I so hope everyone in this room is going to make. and second, given how many people in this room are from countries desperate to attract investment, you know the Brits in the room first of all just give us the top two tips on what you did or what you would do today to attract investment to a country. Welcome. GITA WIRJAWAN: Thank you. Ngaire and Blavatnik School of Government for inviting me to be here, It's a real honor. The decision for anybody to join a government I think is quite varied. I belong to a camp that I thought was sort of a gradual process in terms of my crystallizing my decision to join a government. The love affair began when I was a banker. I was being called by the then leadership of the Republic of Indonesia for advocacy with respect to usually the capital markets. then it grew as to include the economy locally then regionally, then internationally. then the geopolitics of things as to how geopolitics would intertwine and this set of of conversations or discussions or discourses took place about maybe 3 to four months every time, he would call upon me after about four, four and a half years it came to a point where he said, "You know, I think you should consider being here full-time." And after about 4 and a half years I think I was so much more ready to say yes. as much as I wasn't thinking about it, but it was easier because I had gotten to know whom I was going to work for, and I think it's important it applies to every dimension, right? whether you're an entrepreneur, a policy maker, a politician or in any domain. I think you've got to be familiar with the environment that you're going to be in you got to be familiar with the environment in the sense that you know the risk not just the upside, and you've got to be able to size up as to how you're going to be able to mitigate those risk. And you've got to be familiar, preferably highly familiar, with whom you're going to be working with or whom you're going to be working for. And I was able to check those two boxes by the time I said yes. Now on the second question in terms of my ability to attract foreign capital formation. It was always a conscious decision for me to not oversell the country, right. Because we were in the business of getting people to put money for Brick and Mortar purposes and brick and mortar investment thesis is a long game. it's not a short game. And I was always conscious about not positioning myself as a stock analyst. If I would have been a stock analyst, I could tell you what could happen in the next 6 months but I need needed to give the picture to the audience that the destination for foreign capital formation purposes has issues, structurally, and less structurally, I think the moment you start telling the structural issues and you start secondarily telling how you're going to be able to address or remedy those structural issues, it helps them to size up the investment thesis. They're in the business of basically putting money to work for the next 10 to 20 years, and that was the first thing. The second, I want to go deeper into some of the structural issues. Indonesia, not unlike many other developing economies, I think is characterized with certain dead weight call it corruptibility, call it lack of educational attainment, So it was important for anybody who aspires to be in the business of attracting capital formation into a developing economy to pinpoint what the government was going to do to remedy those issues. How do you present directionality? How do you basically convince the other guy the room that tomorrow is going to be better than today? The day after is going to be better than tomorrow? We're going to be less uneducated tomorrow, we're going to be less corrupt two days from today, Then they'll start extrapolating, interpolating in terms of how the investment thesis is going to sound out. That I thought helped. And I think the third, really is to be able to nurture the relationship that they can feel comfortable about or with respect to the directionality of rule of law. I'm in the camp that strongly believes that capital formation does not take place just by way of ideological orientation, just by way of geographic, strategic attractiveness. I think it primarily boils down to the extent to which or the degree to which or how well you can actually enforce what needs to be enforced. Call that rules and regulations. -That's fascinating. Can I pick that up? A few moments ago when we were chatting, we both were talking about how Indonesia is I think the word you used was <i>under-narrated </i> So there's a a little bit of a paradox here, because you're saying not overselling the country but actually looked at from a lot of the rest of the world this country, which is the largest Muslim population in the world, it's potentially a kind of superpower in its region is hardly talked about. It's underknown, it's undersold. So how do I put those two pictures together, and do you agree that it's under narrated, and what do you think it needs to do to put itself ,or should it not put itself more on the world stage? Maybe it should keep its' head under the radar? -Well you know it applies to personal relationships, the way it does to institutional or Sovereign relationships, right? you've got to basically be able to put yourself in a position of credibility with respect to whatever topic you want to talk about. So you tee yourself up in a meeting, whether it's in Silicon Valley, Shenzhen, Seoul. Tokyo, or London, and you tell the guy whatever you want to tell so that you could be in a position of credibility And I'm still in the camp that believes that by underselling the narrative you are more likely to put yourself in a position of credibility. I think this is symptomatic of not only Indonesia, it is symptomatic and characteristic of the broad southeast Asia with the absolute exception of Singapore, which I think has been a great storytelling country. but the other nine countries or economies of Southeast Asia I think need to tell the stories. The first thing they ought to do is to tee themselves up in front of the right audience anywhere everywhere they go. The second is really to make sure that by way of what you utter put yourself in a position of credibility I'm sort of like a much bigger believer of underselling as opposed to overselling because when your country is rated BBB or less, the risk of slipping from overselling is much bigger than the upside from underselling. -But sometimes a country that tells a powerful story succeeds in telling itself that story. The story shapes the country. So some would say that Singapore by telling this strong story sure it was telling it to t he rest of the world, but ultimately it was telling it to itself. And if you were telling Indonesia's story today how would you tell that story? The story that you would like Indonesians to tell themselves. -It's similar to how I would narrate the Southeast Asian narrative. This is a region of, or a country of 280 million people, or a region of 700 million people. that has a $3.9 trillion economy, bigger than that of India, much bigger than that of many countries in Asia, not going to mention the names. It has the ability to geopolitically geostrategically position itself with respect to the two great powers, China and the US. and this is empirical, by way what we have gone through in the last 2,000 years, having been graced by Buddhism for 400 years, Hinduism for 600 years, colonization for 350 years. Islam, Christianity, Independence, democratization for the subsequent 700 to 800 years, with Bloodshed of less than 10 million lives lost, with respect to differences of opinions or views related to sovereignty race ethnicity or religion. It serves as a fantastic narrative of peace and stability. Compare that to Europe which has shed blood involving close to 200 million lives in the last 2,000 years. So peace and stability is a sine qua non for any kind of economic prosperity, for you to attain that economic prosperity, you've got to be good at distributing public goods. intellect, health care, welfare, social value, moral value, to the extent you can deliver those the way the Singaporeans have. I think you've got a great story last Indonesia whether it's 280 million people or Southeast Asia, 700 million people, I think has a good chance on the back of this massive wherewithal to embrace multipolarity, as to try to expand upon its regional- I mean strategic autonomy, expand upon its freedom of choice to climb the global order. I'm not suggesting that we're up there at the totem pole but I think we've got a good chance on the back of this great wherewithal to embrace multipolarity and our scale, or present scale, and future scale, I think we've got a chance to be somewhat revisionist to the pre-existing order, in a way that would be acceptable to anybody including two superpowers. I've always told my buddies that on the back of all that I don't Envision Southeast Asia being pushed to the corner where we've got to choose either an iPhone or a Huawei, because we have 700 million people and we have been able to basically exercise some degree of strategic autonomy and be able to expand upon our freedom of choice to climb the global order somewhat incrementally. It really boils down to our ability to better educate ourselves. -So just on that, what is it that you think you need to change about global order for Southeast Asia, and how do you stop Southeast Asia being picked up because both superpowers specialize in that, so you'll get Southeast Asian countries coming together to say we'll change this but then Indonesia or Singapore will get bored off, split away, it's very easy to divide and conquer but the first thing is what is it that you think needs to change that Southeast Asia can and should change, or that it should change even if it can't? -Well I I think it's safe to assume that in the present and near foreseeable future of higher degree of multipolarity, we're no longer living in a unipolar world The degree of any country's ability to multilateralize, is somewhat diminished, if not significantly diminished. Multilateralization is on the decline as a result of which any nation, any country is somewhat more compelled to bilateralize, or plurilateralize at best. When you need to do that, well the beauty about multilateralization, call it the principle of undertaking, this is within the WTO philosophy or spirit, the principle of single undertaking is that nothing is agreed until and unless everybody agrees. A country of 300,000 people has a veto power as much as a country of 1.5 billion people. So if you've got 193 countries in one room, one guy does not agree, you're protected, you can leverage off this guy's veto to make sure that there is a multilateral agreement in the next discussion. But if you don't have that, you're stuck with just one guy in the roo,. There's two guys in the room if the other guy has a marginal productivity of $200,000 per capita per year of goods and services, call that Singapore, and the other guy has a marginal productivity of only $25,000 of goods and services per capita per year, the lower marginal productivity guy is exposed. So the only way out in a much more bilateral, or even plurilateral kind of world order, you've got to move up the ante in terms of that marginal productivity. How do you attain that? Just by way of massive overinvestment in education, overinvestment in infrastructure overinvestment in finding that right intersection between power and talent. Investment in finding way so that you become competitive, if not more competitive. This is where Southeast Asia has underperformed in a big way with respect to China. If you take a look at the last 30 years economically speaking the GDP per capita of Southeast Asia on average has only grown about 2.7 times, last 30 years. China 10 times. It's highly identifiable as to why Southeast Asia underperformed. Massive underinvestment in education massive underinvestment in infrastructure lack of optimal intersection between power and talent call that governance and then lack of competitiveness and the lack of competitiveness is quite empirical If you take a look at the number of business licenses issued by the Southeast Asians it averages at about one business license on a per 1,000 adult people basis. Whereas China has been able to issue 9 to 10 business licenses on a per 1,000 adult people basis. Knowing these four attributes which have correlated with how we have underperformed with respect to China makes it easier for view taking. so we just got to make sure that we increase our investment in education, infrastructure and find a better way of intersecting between power and talent and issue more business license. but these four attributes are actually interrelated with other many variables. Some of which include your ability to attract capital. Why is it so necessary for Southeast Asia to attract capital? because if you take a look at the monetary space of Southeast Asia, it is limited structurally if you take a look at the money supply to GDP ratio of Indonesia, it's only at 46%. The Philippines at less than 90%. A typical developed economy money supply to GDP ratio is more than 200% If you take a look at the fiscal space, the tax ratios of all Southeast Asian countries range from 9.5% to 16%, and you all know typical OECD countries tax ratio is at about 33% So the only way out is to figure out how to attract capital from outside so that you can put more money into education, infrastructure, better governance, and competitiveness. -Fantastic. Let's turn to your questions. I just want to highlight that Gita's two recent papers as a scholar now at Stanford were on <i>Money Matters</i> looking at economic and economic policies within democracies across Southeast Asia. and <i>the Paradox of sustainability </i> which coming out of last week's climate negotiations in Baku. you might also want to hear about. So with that menu in front of you, who would like to start the questions? Yeah, we can have some questions. We'll have one up here. And as always introduce yourself before your question. -Hi. I'm Kenneth from Indonesia. and an MPP student here. It's a great pleasure to have you here at the Blavatnik School. So my question maybe relates a little bit to what you guys talked about specifically on the storytelling of Southeast Asia and Indonesia I'm just curious to hear your perspective about how president Prabowo has been very active in the international stage for the past two weeks. Coming to China to the US, meeting the king here in the UK, and with his team also pushing a very bullish climate pledge at COP focusing on energy transition in Indonesia. Do you think his leadership will shape Indonesia's story better to the global stage, and where do you see I ndonesia in the next five years with his leadership as an internationalist? Thank you. -Well I'll divide the answer into two parts. The first is really the fact that a lot of people don't recognize or know, which is that ever since he joined the government about four years ago as a minister of defense and recently as the president, he has visited London 19 times. Disproportionately many more than other countries in the world. The United States I think just four or five times. and this I think speaks of his inkling for internationalism. He was educated here in the UK for primary school and high school, and he went to the US for the Military Academy training. He speaks German, French, Dutch, English, and of course Bahasa. which is our language. So if one were to wonder as to whether or not he has an internationalist tendency, he does, and that I think is very helpful for anybody leading up a nation especially a nation of 280 million people. At a time when there's so much, call it neurosis, in political systems all across the world, You've got to basically tell the stories about what you stand up for and what you want for the people and what you want from the other guys especially in a much more bilateralized type of environment, call it less multilateral type of environment. So the fact that he is sensitive to internationalist type of philosophical thinking, I think is helpful. The second part is related to his earlier rhetoric about getting the economy to grow 8% per year. And this is the part where I've sort of like try to explain this as a layman. The baseline for Indonesia in terms of economic growth trajectory is at about 4.5% to 5% and that basically is predicated on a number of things. one of which is on the foreign direct investment that has been coming to Indonesia at an amount of about $25 to $31 billion per year. By the way just so you know Southeast Asia gets about $200 billion a year, Singapore gets about 100-140 of those for a country that's only 6 million people. Indonesia gets about 25 to 31 billion. Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, and Malaysia each would get about 10 to 20 billion, just to give you perspective. So if he wants to move the needle up from 5% to 8% we're talking about a delta of 3% In a context of $1.4 trillion economy, we're talking about $40 billion, right? so if he can move the FDI up from $31 billion to $71 billion, he's got the answer and that $71 billion is still a lot less than what Singapore has been able to get every year. -Has he asked you to repeat what you did last time? Sorry. Indirectly, yeah. but I think he is definitely going to make more trips to London and I would if I were to have the chance I would try to convince his people to convince him to come to Oxford and tell the story himself. -We've been working on it. -There you go. But that's how how conceivable it is to get the needle to move up from 5% to 8%. It's not a rocket science. This is what China was doing more than 20 years ago and they have been doggedly consistent in terms of getting foreign direct investment from all over the world massively just by way of showing the story matters to the rest of the world and we're going to work on a rule of law. that I think is an important part of the narrative. -Next question. I was going to look for a non-indonesian question. There we go, we'll take Eric's question. and then I'm going to come back right down to you guys. -Hi, my name is Eric, I'm an MPP student. Thanks so much for coming and sharing your story. I found it very fascinating. I just have a question in terms of how Indonesia goes about managing its cultural, religious, and ethnic heterogeneity Here I think in Europe at the moment, there's a lot of issues arising when it comes to the question of diversity and how cultural diversity is unfortunately leading to a populist backlash so in Indonesia, what do you think the policies have been that have helped to manage the religious, ethnic, and cultural diversity amongst the population? I think there's hundreds of ethnic groups from my research, so what policies have helped you to achieve social cohesion in the face of heterogeneity that you think maybe countries in Europe that are dealing with the diversity question in an unprecedented way can follow suit on? -The heterogenity is historical over the last 2,000 years. I can only speak for the last 2,000 years because I wasn't born before then. but if you take a look at the cross- section of Southeast Asia today there is about 250 million Muslims, most of which live in Indonesia some in Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and south part of Thailand, and Philippines. You've got 150 million Buddhist, you've got 150 million Christians, you've got 10 to 15 million Hindus, and you've got variant of different local flavors of faiths. On top of that you've got about 3,000 dialects, and you've got thousands of ethnicities including the sub ethnicities. and this is not a spur-of-a-moment kind of thing, this has been sticky for the last 2,000 years, if there's anything that's unsticky, it would have been the pivot from Hinduism to Muslims, Buddhism to Islam. You can see that quite vividly in the number of Hindus which has somewhat declined to 10 to 15 million but overall this has been sticky and I think I just want to point out how Buddhism was able to proliferate. It was by way of an organic type of interaction by the Indian Merchants. Hinduism similarly. It wasn't an inorganic type of imposition propagation upon someone else's so the risk of anything exploding on the back of something that would have been very much organic, I think is not as high as you would expect. so that I think is a gift to Southeast Asia and I call this the culture of pragmatism, by way of that knitting or beautiful knitting of the different cultural, religious, ethnic, civilizational variables would've been able to embrace the culture of pragmatism so that we don't rub off on each other in a bad way. We understand each other, we appreciate each other better. Yes, we've had episodic stresses, but in a grand scheme of things, those episodic stresses I think are very much within manageable boundaries. So how do we work our way up it's that culture of principles. How do you advance superlatives, perfectionism, that's the kind of stuff that I would encourage as many Southeast Asians as possible to try to figure out. In a nutshell, how do we figure out a way to Singaporeanize ourselves, right? I mean Singapore is not perfect but it's got a lot of good things that we want to copycat and that I think is the way out for just any developing region. -Can I check with you, Gita? because there's three things that people underline in Singapore. One is public spaces that all different ethnicities and classes inhabit. Two is public housing and public schools which mix people together and bring people cheek to cheek, and the third is public information. so in Singapore, you could say censorship, but most countries are really struggling with that, including this one, that's to say with misinformation, with social media or with algorithmic polarization. We know that algorithms just separate people so how does Indonesia measure up at the moment on those three things? -With great difficulty. -On all three? -I mean, don't think there's much that can be done with respect to algorithmic amplification or polarization from an a regulatory standpoint and also from a societal standpoint. from a regulatory standpoint, I kind of talked about this earlier there is so much anachronistic numb oversight just by way of the fact that the Regulators that are supposed to be regulating they're aged much higher than those that are supposed to be regulated. The divergent demographics are just so compelling that I don't foresee this getting fixed anytime soon. The second part if you take a look at the Singapore model, part of the Singapore model is to have a close loop system with respect to their HDB. HDB is the development, housing program. They put the Muslims, the Hindus, the Christians, coming from different ethnicities in one building. Ifone guy that's Hindu wants to sell to a girl or whoever out there, it's got to be sold off to a Hindu. and if Muslim wants to sell, they've got to sell it off so that they maintain that ratio. It's kind of a force multiculturalism kind of thing this was propagated by Lee Kuan Yew a long time ago but it entails a scenario where you are supposed to try to coexist, colive, coeducate, coeat, co-whatever, consistently within the same zip code. and that I think has translated into a beautiful kind of multiculturalism in Singapore. I forgot the first part -But does that mean that Indonesia is polarizing like so many other countries? -No. That's that's what I'm suggesting. -Back to Eric's question, what's stopping Indonesia from polarizing? if you've got algorithmic information which you know, we had a presentation here in Oxford last week that really looks at the data across the world. People are looking at news through an algorithm are polarized, so if you've got all those forces and you don't have the housing and schooling that's forcing people together what's stopping Indonesia from polarizing? Is it because it's more homogeneous? -No, it's actually quite heterogeneous. The Baseline is that there is heterogenity. the Baseline is that it's polarized conversationally That's the Baseline that needs to be recognized. So how do we rebase ourselves? I think it requires a new political culture that needs to be bottom upped, right? How do we make sure that the conversations in the schools, in the offices, in the places of worship, in any kind of social institution, are such that they talk about things that are important, ideas, not events or personalities, right? That I think will help depolarize. Yes, one would be hopeful of a scenario where you can actually top down it. but the challenge with a top-down type of scenario is that there's not a whole lot of optimum on that intersection between power and talent. so all we need is I think just a few role models 10, 20, 50, who can actually try to infuse this new type of political culture in any of those institutions or all of those institutions that I talked about. to figure out that hey you should start listening to the long form podcast as opposed to the 20 second Tik Tok stuff that's unhealthy. You should start listening to this great podcast that featured how we're going to be able to energize ourselves in a much more renewable manner. That's happening already and I can speak for my own podcast which I talked about earlier. When we started four years ago we had the kind of pessimism that is so characteristic of any Southeast Asian country that we were not going to get a lot of views, but after four years, the cumulative viewership is more than 94 million, the subscription is close to a million and it's viewed in 60 countries. It gives me hope it gives me optimism that people are actually catching on to something that's good for the long term. So you're right in that it's polarized you're right in that it's heterogeneous you're right in that we are not putting food on the table as much as we should but the good news is that there's enough peace and stability that serves as a sine qua non for anything that's better than what we have today. -Great, next question. So we'll come across to here. I am coming up to the front but I'm going to come up to there first. Yes, you, yeah. -Hello, I'm Victoria from Armenia. Thank you so much for an insightful talk. so my question is about your recent report on <i>Money Matters </i> here you make a strong argument in favor of advancing liberal democracy in Southeast Asian countries and if necessary, fixing it in order to promote economic development in the region. However the countries you identify today and compared with East Asian countries at least could not be coined as liberal democracies at the time they were having this economic lip frogging. So could you please elaborate more on why it is really essential for Indonesia, for Vietnam to advance their democratic institutions to have economic development? Thank you. -Out of the 10 countries, four are monarchical. Of the four monarchies, one is an absolute monarchy, which is Brunei. You cannot expect Brunei to be a liberal democracy, but the other three, which are Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia have constitutional democracy in the working. It's not a perfect kind of democracy. I wouldn't call it a perfect kind of liberal democracy. Now the other six consist of Laos and Vietnam which are single party, which we can't be hopeful with respect to any kind of democratization. But the four remaining, Singapore, Indonesia, Myanmar, and Philippines, are non-monarchical, are non-single party system, they have great hope of further democratizing as much as there is some sort of a limitation with respect to how each, some, or most of these would have democratized ever since we got independent. I'm in a camp that believes that democracy should not merely be defined as a distribution of power. Granted there's not an optimal distribution of power but I think more importantly, there needs to be a distribution of public goods. That is a much more refined definition of what a liberal democracy ought to be. and I'm not going to mention countries but I think there are countries that claim to be great liberal democracies but unfortunately have not been good at distributing public goods. So what's the point of priding oneself that he or she has a thriving liberal democracy if the distribution of public goods is not as optimal as it should be? So, I say with full sensitivity of the imperfections of what Southeast Asia ought to be in terms of becoming a liberal democracy but I'm also an optimist and a realist in that until and unless we fix our wherewithal to distribute public goods, might as well not call ourselves a better democracy. so I think the distribution of public goods is a key criterion of naming or calling anybody or anyone else a liberal democracy. My name is Hatam, I'm Egyptian and I covered Southeast Asia for about three years at the World Bank on financial structuring, and it was very impressive, I think. There's a development story that all developing countries need to learn You've navigated a very successful career in both the public and private sector and you've mastered both languages of both worlds, the public and private sector, -I'm not sure about that. How important do you think it is for us here at Blavatnik School as public policy students to kind of have this dual perspective looking at both the private and public sector. but also coming back to point on attracting capital and how important it is and it is indeed now we kind of know from statistics that we really can't meet the sustainable development goals without attracting private capital, without attracting foreign investment. So how can we do this while making sure that it's not extractive? What kind of strategies did you employ in your role as minister of trade to make sure that the investors, or trade or whatever kind of capital that's coming from abroad is not actually extractive? -Well, a simple start on that question is what do you wish you had known about government when you were in t he private sector? So you went from the private sector into government, a strange world, what is it that you wish you'd know in hindsight when you were in the private sector about government? I think if I had known what it would take to be a successful policy maker, I probably would would have not joined policy making. but there is a subtle difference between politics and policy making, right? I must stress that for some of you that want to be a policy maker, it's a lot easier as opposed to some of you who want to be a politician. Politician or politics is a blood sport. You got to be ready to bleed. and the extent to which bleed, is a family business, right? Your family's got to be resolute about what your aims are. Now the distinction between policymaking and politics other than what I've just described is that the KPI or the deliverables with respect to policymaking are a lot easier defined. Defined in the sense that as long as you put forth the element of competence. put forth the element of Integrity, put forth the element of being able to account for your failures and your successes, you're going to be a great policy maker. Whereas in politics it's a lot more hazy, right? it depends on how you BS around it. So I think if I had known what it would have taken for anybody or for myself to be a good policy maker I probably would have shied away from it. but to your point on what it would take for trade to be much more robust investment to be much more robust I think it's better for the policy maker to speak as opposed to the politician to speak for purposes of those two. I'm a multilateralist innately, but I'm also a realist in the sense that we are entering this era of bilateralization in a big way. But the good news is that if you take a look at the global trade to GDP ratio it's been consistently at about at about 40% So you've got a good basis to continue feeling more optimistically about moving capital, goods and services from one place to another. You just got to know how to pick the winner bilaterally or plurilaterally. -So now we have the questions right at the front. Is there still a microphone there in the middle? We'll take your question, and then we'll take the questions at the front. You've been so patient, thank you guys. Hello, Sir, I am Winzy. I'm a current MPP student and I'm from Singapore. This is not a question about Singapore, but I wanted to turn it into a question about your personal life, and something maybe perhaps deeper and that you can share with us. I was curious to know more about the thought processes and the motivations that drove you to make certain decisions in your career like taking the step into the office and then out of the office, and now embarking on the podcast focusing more on education. Or even moving on from here, what's next? Was it that throughout these different phases in your life you were constantly posturing yourself to be in a position to make the most impact or balancing that against your personal life and building a family and concerns for your children or were there certain perceptions about public service that evolved and convinced you that a different position or a different career would be more act to fulfill those kinds of motivations and ambitions? -And just before you leave the microphone, did you want to correct anything we said about Singapore? -I think we could have a conversation about Singapore in private. -I oversold Singapore, that's what she's saying. I'm also really proud to be Singaporean and to be Southeast Asian, I'm really proud about the nation building story and the ability to really hone our statecraft but I'm also critical in certain ways of how effective that has been so far. -Thank you for sharing. -Fair enough. -I were naughty I'd get your wife to answer the question of what's your North Star but we'll let you answer that one. -Anybody here play music? I went to the US on a music scholarship. All I wanted to be was Jimmy Hendricks or Miles Davis. I was studying Jazz composition and I was given the the death sentence by my mother, who wasn't comfortable with my becoming a musician at the end of my third year. So I chose the most popular subject at school. this was at the University of Texas. Well the lady at the register's office said, "Well son, accounting or computer science." So I changed my major, but what's beautiful about jazz is that your ability to improvise, right? I learned classical music for seven, eight years and I veered off into other genres of music, and I just stuck myself to the Jazz genre. And being able to rely on this pre-existing corridor or framework and allow yourself to syncopate follow the tributaries or distributaries of whatever life serves you with is a cool thing. And that leads up to a new philosophical evolution within me that I should pursue anything with open-mindedness. This is where I think all of you should learn. I've known so many people within the policy space that have just not been able to show open-mindedness and I think open-mindedness is so critically useful for any dimension. so I never thought about becoming a policy maker but when somebody tinkered with introducing the that idea to me I said well okay and I approached it with open-mindedness and then I did the same thing with a few other things that I did. The last one of which was the podcast. I still want to give back to the society and I don't want to be pigeonholed as an Indonesia guy, I want to do it for Southeast Asia so that the Cambodians, the Myanmarese, the Bruneians, the Thais, the Filipinos, take ownership with not only themselves but with what I think is important for Southeast Asia. And thank God this platform has served, hopefully Southeast Asia quite well. and we diverge, we don't converge. Meaning I approach divergent topics with open-mindedness. I would interview anybody on spirituality, on philosophy, on neuroscience, data science, computer science, entrepreneurship, economics, what have you so that people in the villages of Papua, Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, could learn what this guy from Tennessee is saying, what this lady from California is saying, what this lady from Oxford is saying, That I think is part of my mission to bring about more relevance of Southeast Asia through the rest of the world and vice versa. So, will I be open-minded with something that's going to come up soon? probably not. I'm quite comfortable with what I'm doing right now. but I'm always trying to keep myself open with new ideas. -So interesting. You know, one of the top performing private schools in the country. I asked the admissions head a few years ago. "So what's the best indicator of the long-term success of your students when you admit them?" And he really surprised me, he said, "The only really reliable one is the kids that love jazz." It's very interesting. -There you go. Can I apply for a job? -It is, and it's very much what you're saying. It's the ability to improvise and to pick up on a conversation\, a musical conversation and to continue it on, and to vary it and hand it back, and give space to somebody else. It's a very interesting thought. Right, up to the front. Let's take one, two, three. We'll take all three. Hi there, good evening everybody, my name's Daryl. I'm currently a student at the Oxford Environmental Change Institute, and also the vice president of the Oxford Indonesia Student Association. Pak Gita and Dean Woods, thank you so much for the conversation. If I could, my question revisits the supposed Singaporean model that you had for Indonesia. with apologies to my colleague for revisiting this story, but having been friends for about four years with a very patriotic Singaporean when I did my undergraduate in Canada, one of my main takeaways about the story of the country is about the incredible degree of micromanaging, if we could say that, that the government does and to some degree I think it's high praise for the government that they have such a capacity to be able to have the resources but also I think the intelligence to be able to do that. but in other degrees as you probably alluded to as well, it may be an expression of perhaps a curtailing of certain rights or civic expressions that perhaps another countries are endowed that privilege. I'm revisiting this idea that I read in James Scott's book,<i> Seeing Like a State.</i> in terms of state legibility where I think Singapore really understands their population whereas on the flip side of the coin, I think Indonesia's current communal sort of culture grew organically as it's probably sensible to many of us Indonesians. Would you say that the Singaporean model is viable or applicable at all to Indonesia? and on the sort of short extension that question, is the sort of Indonesia's current inferiority to Singapore part of your underselling strategy for Indonesia itself? -Sounds like you're asking should Indonesia micromanage its population? Let's take a question from there. -Good evening, my name is Alisher, I'm also doing MPP here, and I'm from Uzbekistan. so my question is around -Sorry from which country? -Uzbekistan. -so my question is around investment attraction specifically from MDBs or IFIs. so especially in developing countries there's a big issue of IFI investment being really top-down and donor-driven. So in the cases of infrastructure investments it's a lot more direct rather than social projects invested by IFIs. Do you see any role models of countries that were actually able to establish such a system that would attract IFI investment but at the same time to make it more -Forgive me, what's an IFI? -Means IMF or multilateral financial insitution. -So you're saying countries that tame the multilaterals and support country's own objectives -Have to make sure that the investment is actually tailored to the needs of people. -And then last question here. Thank you. My name is Fandi Ahmad. I'm Indonesian. I'm third year student at International Development Department. My question is- I just come back from the Philippines actually and doing my research, and I found that actually there is a phenomenon then where a lot of firms serving other countries in developed countries within the global value chains and this kind of export of services becomes their 9% of GDP which is so huge for a country Now I come back to Indonesia after visiting Philippines and then I see how digital economy in Indonesia is so big. We are like 42% of digital economy in Southeast Asia, but then when I see how the digital economy in Indonesia works, is we are serving domestic markets. So when we are talking about the open mindset and then when I come back to Indonesia I see a lot of us playing domestically, compete domestically instead of taking the role in the global domestic n terms of economy, in terms of politics. My questions to you really, how do we change that as Indonesians? What kind lesson learn that we can have from that process? -So is Indonesia too inward looking? And then last one here, I've noted them. -Selamat sore, Pak Gita. Thank you for being here. My name is Ben. I'm from Indonesia as well. My question will be around democracy and policy discourse, one of the narratives that Indonesia often share to the world is them being a fourth largest democracy. -Third largest. -Third largest democracy -Fourth most populous -Thank you. so like in the perspective of a more procedural view of democracy, we created a more stable politics and economics, but in a more substantive view of democracy, we've been seeing that Indonesia is lacking of sort of political spectrum with many of the political parties either having nationalistic branding or Islamic branding. We don't really have left-leaning politics in our policy discourse since the 1965 mass killing of the leftists. My question would be- because of that we've been nurturing a culture of pragmatism in politics. So whenever it comes to the election after election there was always a coalition of many parties, and I would say there is no such thing as unlikely coalition in Indonesia because every political parties can consolidate with each other. My question would be, what's your take on this? Do you think this has contributed to the way our policy makers and ourselves think about policy? whether this is contributed to the richness of our policy discourse or this is actually the strength, uniquely the strength of Indonesia in having a more consolidated and stabilized politics? Thank you. Look, I'm not trying to suggest my superstitiousness, which I'm not. but as of late in the last few months, I've been dreaming, and each time within my dream, it's this visualization of Modi, Trump, MBS, Maloney, Prabowo, high-fiving each other at the next G20 meeting. What that is manifesting is I think what I've observed with regards to the shifting of the political calculus to the right, and we can debate about this separately over a drink. But I'll share my view. I think this is partly correlated with the rising inequalities those of or that of income, that of wealth, that of opportunities and what I alluded to earlier the increasing centripetalism of economic development. A more accelerated economic development at a primary city as opposed to that in secondary, much less regional. So if this were to continue, I don't foresee the political calculus recentering itself, much less moving to the left as you aptly pointed out which we've been absent since well, you know, whether it's the 60s or 70s. with that in mind, it's going to present structural challenges to Southeast Asia because if the political calculus is moving to the right, it's going to be manifested in so many things, one of which is the fiscal policy posturing. If you are moving to the right, your fiscal policy will need to basically entail a lower tax ratio by way of the less role played by the government. higher role played by the entrepreneurs or the private space. That's going to present more challenges, structurally speaking. So how do we remedy this, right? I think the way to remedy this is to take the long view and to take the structural view of finding a better intersection between power and talent So the baseline is that the calculus is moving to the right, but you've got to tactically figure out a way to make sure that people that enter policymaking, people that enter academia, people that enter politics, manifest better intersection between power and talent. You mentioned Indonesian politics. There is no single party that talks about ideology, right? I mean they can't even tell the difference between what's a left and a right. they can't even tell you what's a center and how do you explain that as it should be manifested in the monetary policy, the fiscal policy, the foreign policy. You can't have a long discussion about it, right? So that's going to be prevailing for a while. But the sooner you can technocratize, conversation, preferably decision making, I think you gonna have better hope. That's the first tactical stuff that I'm telling people. Just figure out a way so that smarter people would enter the space. And I think it's safe to assume that in the near foreseeable future, Ideology is gonna play less or a role as oppose to nationalism. It's manifested in even developed countries, not just developing or underdeveloped but as long as that nationalism deals with how to push forth any kind of superlative so that there is economic prosperity, there's better redistribution of wealth, I'm cool with that for the time being. That I think is what needs to happen so that better people, more competent people, more people of Integrity, join the forces of policymaking and politics Now on the third, I think it's important to multilateralization because it adds credence, call it credibility to the narrative If an IFC puts money, call it $500,000, on a hydro project in Uzbekistan, it's going to be a lot easier for you to attract capital from anywhere else. and I say this with optimism. on the back of the fact that there is more than $100 trillion dollar worth of liquidity right now sitting within the G7 countries and their friends and allies. about 60 of this hundred trillion dollar is being managed by no more than 17 transnational investment firms The biggest one of which is BlackRock, they manage about $11 trillion. The second biggest one is Vanguard, they manage about $10 trillion. You add up the remaining 15 transnational investment firms you get up to about $60 to $70 trillion. You got to have a conversation with these guys. BlackRock has already taken a view on Africa with respect to infrastructure. so I don't foresee great difficulties for Uzbekistan to narrate its narrative as long as y ou have the proper narator and you can account for the investment thesis. So that I think would be the way to multilateralize a conversation, by roping in a multilateral institution in the picture but being more sensitive to the fact that there is massively much more liquidity within the non-multilateral institutions. -Then last, the Singaporean micromanagement -I think the first and the second are interrelated Leadership is an act of serendipity. I can present to you countries which have very sophisticated institutions but for some reason they cannot institutionalize a proper leadership. I'm not going to mention the countries but there are countries with very unsophisticated institutions but for some reason they've been able to produce great leadership. When Lee Kuan Yew came back from Cambridge, Singapore's GDP per capita was $65, same as that of Kenya. but here's a guy that could have been a lawyer in London, in New York, in Sydney, Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, getting compensated in a very robust manner, but he chose to go back and work for free to help the union workers, and he stayed consistently with respect to pushing forth the three attributes, competence, integrity, and accountability. I call that serendipity. You can't find somebody like that easily, right? so I would urge you to burn more sense tonight say your prayers that hopefully the other 192 countries would have somebody that has a great wherewithal to not only be a revolutionary, but to be a great nation builder. I think he strikes as one of probably two leaders who have proven to be able and capable revolutionary and nation builder. Most people just end up within one of the two categories. Deng Xiaoping, the other one who basically basically was part revolutionary but a great nation builder. and he basically you know the irony about this is, China as an autocracy has actually democratized talent much better than many democracies because Deng ever since 1978 allowed for the intersection of power and talent in a very democratic manner. As long as you prove to be smart, intelligent, and of integrity, and of accountability. That's the attitude. So how do you select talent a lot more based on meritocracy as opposed to loyalty and or patronage? that I think is the micro managerial part of nation building. But on top of that or before that you got to go through that serendipitous episode of getting the guy who can actually be value added as consistently in the long run. -Can we finish, Gita, with what was the absolutely best thing about being in government? -You get a police escort. -That's not good enough. -Look, knowing that what you utter, what you sign, has an impact on 280 million people is incredibly rewarding, but also incredibly punishing If you screwed it up, it's highly punishing, and not being able to actually justify the merit of what you're doing is punishing. So, two points I guess. You utter the right set of words that you feel have an impact positively upon the electorate or the people. Number two, when you do something that does not have a positive impact, you can actually justify it in an acceptable manner. that I think is a rewarding experience -And that's why the MPPs here are doing foundations. That was a wonderful conversation. we've gone across the development of economies, the development and importance of Institutions for accountable government with integrity and your own personal choices. Are you still playing jazz music? I sure am. I got one more thing to say though. -Yep, please. Message on Southeast Asia or about Southeast Asia. This is in the context of sustainability, Southeast Asia is powered by about 400,000 megawatts worth of power generation. The electrification on a per capita basis is variable Singapore and Brunei are electrified at about 10,000 kilowatt hour per capita, the rest less than 5,000. Indonesia at 1,300. So the key challenge for all of us in Southeast Asia for those that take ownership with the narrative of Southeast Asia, how do we modernize, right? Before even rebasing ourselves to AI. Modernity is defined at a threshold of about 6,000 kilowatt hour per capita. How do we get from 1,300 to 6,000 for Indonesia, Malaysia from 5,000 to 6,000? and all the rest from whatever levels they are respectively to 6,000? We need to build one terawatt of power generation capabilities that's a million megawatts, on top of the pre-existing 400,000 megawatt. How much money is required to rebuild the 400,000 and to build new ones of one terawatt? it's about 1.4 terawatt, we need about $2-$3 trillion. Tt the rate we're only getting FDI of 200 billion most of that is not being used for renewabilit. I want to just Infuse realism here, when you go to Baku, Copenhagen, Paris, Glasgow, Dubai, there's a lot of elitism in the rhetoric. The realism is that countries in Southeast Asia most of which are developing, they need massive amounts of capital and they're not showing wherewithal to do that, much less the sub-Saharan countries. That's the first disconnect between elitism and realism. The second disconnect is these people are talking about 1.5 to 2 degrees the reality is, it's easily going to be above 3 degrees before 2050. I think it's important, the owners is on us to figure out a collective way to collaborate and the money is there, the technology is there, but the problem is all these technological capital an only be procured at a cost of 15 cents per kilowatt hour or more whereas the developing economy's affordability or purchasing power is no more than 5 cents per kilowatt hour. So your hope is with respect to getting that intersection to occur when this 15 comes down to 14,13, and so on and this five goes up to 6, 7, I would bet on this thing coming down as opposed to this thing going up at the rate that there is so much neurosis in the political systems of the world. So help all of us so that we can attain whatever sustainability goals we have articulated -Well, that's a fantastic post-Baku message. Energy transition, let's focus on it for all those parts of the world that need it most first. Thank you, Gita.