REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) pledged the government will take a big step in the implementation of land reform this year. "What we did in 2016 was only an initial step in redistribution of assets. We will continue in large scale in 2017," the president said speaking at the 18th anniversary of the Indonesian Justice and Unity Party here on Sunday. 

He said the government already gave recognition to nine groups of people of traditional law by distributing 12,544 hectares of lands to 5,712 farm families.  "There are almost 2,000 traditional communities but we had given only nine of them. This is only the beginning as we have 12.7 million hectares of lands ready to be distributed among groups of both traditional communities and people living around forests," Jokowi said. 

He said from the beginning, his government has sought to implement economic policy inspired by Pancasila, the state ideology, marked with mutual assistance.  The economic policy is directed toward bringing about social justice for all Indonesian people, he said. "This will continue to be our policy as we have started with BBM (oil fuel)," he said. 

Jokowi has launched a bold regimented price policy for BBM that the selling price of BBM is the same in Java and Papua. Previously the BBM price could be ten times more expensive in the country's easternmost province than in Java.  He said it took 1.5 years for the government to get the policy through before it could be implemented last October. 

He said the price of Premium gasoline in mountainous interior area of Papua ranged from Rp60,000 to Rp100,000 as against only Rp6,450 per liter in Java.  "It had been going on for tens of years. Now we make the price the same (in Java and Papua). A Rp500 hike in BBM price per liter triggered three month long demonstrations in Java. In Papua the price was Rp60,000 for years but there was no demonstration," he said. 

He said the government is also planning to do the same with the cement price pointing the high disparity in price of the building material in Java and Papua. "In Java the cement price is around Rp70,000-Rp80,000 per bag as against Rp800,000-Rp2.5 million in Puncak Jayawijaya, the mountainous district of Papua. This is a problem we could not yet solve, but God willing we would continue seeking a solution," the president said. 

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