President: Indonesia must not rely on exports only

SBY PRESIDENCY. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Indonesia must not rely solely on exports but also empower its domestic economy and market in the future.

Speaking before participants of a National Resilience Institute (Lemhanas) course at the palace here on Monday, he said all parties had to learn from the mistakes that had caused the current global crisis so that Indonesia would not be trapped into another crisis.

He said current global financial crisis resulted from economic imbalances that had happened over the past 20 years without many countries becoming aware of them.

"We will still maintain our stimulus policy until everything has returned to normal. Why has the economy changed like this. It is because of imbalances that have occurred over the past 20 years," he said.

Citing an example, he said, during the period some countries had imported excessively while others had exported also excessively so that, when the buying power dropped, the impact spread to all fields and all people.

He said after the crisis had ended later, the country`s national economy must not rely solely on exports but also on the empowerment of the domestic economy and market.

"The world has undergone a big change since last year when the global economic crisis began. We must not only look at it but think about the future, what lessons we can learn from the past and how a new world order can be established," he said.(ANTARA News)