JakartaGlobe-Oct 25
Indonesia denied Wednesday that it favored Chinese investors, saying that Jakarta had its doors wide open for other countries as long as they are willing to make an investment. China accounts for a large part of Indonesia’s foreign direct investment (FDI) — coupled with Chinese involvement in many of Indonesia’s major projects — have caused other countries to see Jakarta favoring Beijing in doing business. However, Investment Minister Bahlil Lahadalia tried to dispel those thoughts, highlighting that Indonesia’s sources of FDI were now “evenly distributed”. As a case in point, other economies such as Japan and the US are rising to be among Indonesia’s top foreign investors, according to Bahlil. “So it would be wrong to say that investment in Indonesia is solely controlled by China. That is not true,” Bahlil said at the 2023 BNI Investor Daily Summit at Hutan Kota by Plataran in Jakarta on Wednesday. The Investment Ministry reported that China had been Indonesia’s second largest foreign investor in 2019-2022, except for 2021. China at the time was in third place, just behind Hong Kong. Indonesia recorded $8.2 billion in Chinese investment in 2022, almost threefold of what Beijing invested in the Southeast Asian country the previous year. China is also taking part in supercharging Indonesia’s electric vehicle (EV) battery dream. Chinese battery giant CATL has committed to invest $6 billion in a battery ecosystem project. Data shows that Japan is consistently in the top 5 of Indonesia’s FDI sources in 2019-2022. Read more at: https://jakartaglobe.id/business/we-are-open-to-all-indonesia-denies-favoring-chinese-investment
