Indonesia President Joko Widodo touts economic success in final state address

JAKARTA: Indonesian President Joko Widodo hailed his economic track record on Friday in a final state of the nation address before he leaves office in October after a decade in power.

Widodo, more popularly known as Jokowi, will be replaced by defence chief Prabowo Subianto after serving the maximum two terms, with more than three-quarters of Indonesians approving of his rule in recent opinion polls.

He will leave office with an economic legacy of consistent growth of about five percent and large infrastructure projects including roads, bridges and airports aimed at better connecting the archipelago.

“In the past 10 years, we have been able to build a new foundation and civilisation, with Indonesia-centred development, building from peripheries, building from villages, and building from outermost areas,” he told lawmakers in capital Jakarta.

Widodo, raised in a bamboo shack in a riverside slum on Indonesia’s biggest island of Java, said his government had built 50 new ports and airports, 1.1 million hectares of irrigation canals and 2,700 kilometres (1,677 miles) of new toll roads.