Jakarta. 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. 

Japan has invested approximately $3.3 billion in Indonesia in the first nine months of 2023, ranking fourth place just after Hong Kong ($5.2 billion). The US emerged as Indonesia’s fifth-largest investor over the same period -- a position that belonged to close neighbor Malaysia in 2022. Indonesia reported that the FDI that came from the US totaled $2.4 billion in January-September 2023. 

Earlier in the day, Bahlil’s aide Nurul Ichwan said that some major economies had approached him to ask why Indonesia was “very close” to a certain country in attracting investment and business. However, Nurul did not refer to China by name.

“When I asked why they came to such a conclusion, their response was: ‘Because that country’s investment is huge and they are also taking almost all of Indonesia’s natural resources,” Nurul said.

“So I told them: ‘Indonesia is very open to anybody -- those who are willing to do investment and collaborate with Indonesia,” he added.

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