Indonesia province hunts for more investors

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s most populous province is offering up a Us$60bil portfolio of projects over the next five years for investors keen to follow the likes of Amazon.com Inc and Hyundai Motor Co in setting up shop there.

West Java, which has an economy nearly the size of Hungary, is asking potential investors to make deals with province-owned companies rather than asking them to go through the local government, governor Ridwan Kamil said in an interview with Bloomberg. That could cut the process to as little as six months, from the usual two-year period, with four investors already in talks, he said.

“Combined with the omnibus law and my political will to push for faster business processes, West Java could be the most exciting place for investing in indonesia,” Kamil said. “I sound like a salesman, but that’s my pitch.”

West Java is central to President Joko Widodo’s bid to revive South-east Asia’s largest economy by aggressively recruiting foreign investment. He has spearheaded an omnibus law that would ease labour rules and cut red tape, aiming to tamp down unemployment and turn around an economy that fell into a recession last quarter.

Some of the world’s biggest companies have pledged investments in West Java in recent months, including Us$8bil from Taiwan’s CPC Corp for a petrochemical plant, Us$2.8bil from Amazon.com for a data centre and Us$1.3bil from Hyundai for an electric vehicle factory.

The province, which accounts for 13% of Indonesia’s gross domestic product, would seek parliamentary approval next year to issue municipal bonds to boost its budget, Kamil said, reviving a plan that’s been years in the making.