据《雅加达邮报》10月21日报道，印尼需要给当地经济通电以加快改善农村地区基础设施以消除发展差距，协调海上事务部长Rizal Ramli说。Indonesia needs to power up the local economy and accelerate the improvement of basic infrastructure in all rural areas to eliminate development disparity, said Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Rizal Ramli.

“Domestic policies should be revised to accelerate growth in low-income areas. In the past, budget allocation was mostly concentrated in Java, but starting this year we will allocate more budget outside Java to reduce the income gap,” said Rizal during the opening ceremony of the third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) for the Asia Pacific region in Jakartaon Wednesday.

Attended by 27 countries, the regional meeting was held in advanced of the 2016 Habitat III. Leaders convened to discuss priorities and develop policy recommendations for sustainable urban development.In the past few years, urbanization has been regarded as merely a tool for development. The fact that it often brings socio-economic problems, such as the growth of poverty and lack of access to safe water and sanitation, cannot be blamed on spontaneous tendencies that attract people to the cities.

The main issue lies in the economic condition of rural areas.“We need to find a suitable model for urbanization. The quality of urbanization is important because it affects the quantity of development that will contribute to achieving prosperity,” said UN Habitat executive director Joan Clos.As for Indonesia, the urbanization issue lies in the government's failure to anticipate the movement of people from rural areas to cities.

According to Public Works and Public Housing Ministry secretary-general Taufik Widjoyono, there were three things that the government could do to fix the current trend of urbanization: directing policy toward rural areas and strengthening law enforcement, creating financial planning with a bigger budget allocation outside of Java and designing better urban plans for inclusive development in rural areas.

“Sustainable urban development is in line with [President] Jokowi’s development agenda of Nawa Cita [a Sanksrit term for nine programs]. Economic independence should be realized by directing our policy and budget allocation toward rural areas and creating better economic opportunities to slow down the flow of urbanization to cities at the same time,” said Taufik.