JAKARTA: Indonesia's Minister of Investment and Downstreaming Rosan Perkasa Roeslani (pic) highlighted that Indonesia has significantly expanded its investment openness by substantially narrowing the number of industries closed to foreign investor participation.
"We are becoming an open country. We revised our negative investment list since the end of 2021-2022, reducing the number of industries closed to foreign participation from 100 to now only six industries," he remarked, reported Antara news agency.
The minister highlighted here on Monday (Dec 9) that the Government of Indonesia also attempted to simplify several rules, policies, and regulations to accommodate investors better.
Roeslani noted that the efforts aimed to help Indonesia achieve economic growth of eight per cent as targeted by President Prabowo Subianto.
"Investment will play a very significant role in how we can achieve this eight-per cent economic growth apart from our domestic consumption," he stated.
He remarked that currently, domestic consumption contributed about 53-54 per cent to Indonesia's economic growth; investment, about 24-25 per cent; government spending, about eight to nine per cent, while net export at only about two per cent.
Roeslani stated that according to the National Development Planning (PPN) Ministry/National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), an investment of Rp13.5 trillion was required in 2025-2029 to realise the targeted economic growth.
He affirmed that the investment was also projected to absorb 3.47 million workers.
In addition to the investment, the government has striven to achieve economic growth by downstreaming various industries with added value and a huge impact on the national economy, such as mining, plantation, fishery, and forestry.
Roeslani stated that currently, the government is mapping the potential and plans to downstream 28 commodities, including coal, nickel, gold, silver, cobalt, natural gas, rare earth metal, shrimp, seaweed, cacao, and tilapia fish.
He stated that one of the government's priorities in downstreaming is the battery and electric vehicle industry, which depended heavily on nickel.
He then invited members of the European Business Chambers of Commerce (EuroCham) Indonesia to cooperate in downstreaming those commodities.
"We are very open to having a productive discussion with EuroCham on how we can move forward and work together in downstreaming our commodities," Roeslani added. - Bernama-Antara
