Boosting the Food Sector, Indonesia Needs to Do This!

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - Managing Director of AmCham Indonesia, Donna Priadi, revealed that the potential of Indonesia’s food sector is enormous and highly promising for development. Moreover, Indonesia possesses abundant natural resources compared to other countries in ASEAN. Donna continued that this advantage needs to be enhanced, particularly in terms of technology. She assessed that the role of technology will be very significant in driving food security in Indonesia. As is known, food security is key to maintaining national stability, security, and the independence of the nation. Thus, Indonesia can be stronger in facing external or global challenges. “So, there is indeed much that needs to be upgraded technologically in terms of production, resilience, and quality of our own food ingredients. Not just traditional funding. But real innovation so as not to lag behind other countries,” said Donna at the Food Summit 2026 event at the Bank Mega Tower in Jakarta on Monday (27/4/2026). She also acknowledged that the challenges in this food sector are not few. One of them is related to raw material issues. Many entrepreneurs in Indonesia still rely on imports to meet their production needs. Seeing this, strong cooperation is needed among policymakers to business actors, so that raw material needs can be fulfilled domestically. “We are a resilient nation. We have overcome various challenges from Covid onwards, but we must not fall asleep. For that, cooperation is needed from policymakers, business actors, and the general public. The industrial players already have many factories in Indonesia related to food, but the raw materials are still imported. Of course, these raw materials have many challenges,” she explained.