First-half investment realisation shows Indonesia's appeal remains intact

Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Head of the Macroeconomics and Finance Centre at the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef), M Rizal Taufikurahman, believes that investment realisation in the first half of 2026 demonstrates that Indonesia’s investment appeal remains quite well maintained amid global economic uncertainty. According to a report from the Ministry of Investment and Downstreaming/BKPM, investment realisation during the period reached Rp1,010.6 trillion, or approximately 49.5 per cent of this year’s target. “However, the challenge in the second half is no longer attracting investment commitments, but ensuring that these investments are immediately realised into productive projects,” Rizal said when contacted by ANTARA in Jakarta on Saturday. Therefore, he argued, the government needs to accelerate project execution through licensing simplification, regulatory certainty, accelerated infrastructure development, and the resolution of various obstacles on the ground. “This means investment should not only be high nominally, but also capable of driving economic growth and increasing national production capacity,” he said. Rizal views Indonesia’s investment climate as having relatively good resilience, supported by a large domestic market, the downstreaming agenda, and maintained macroeconomic stability. However, investors in the second half are expected to be more selective amid high global uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and persistently high funding costs. These conditions mean investment tends to flow to sectors offering profit certainty and high added value, such as mineral downstreaming, manufacturing, the digital economy, data centres, energy, and logistics. “Thus, policy consistency becomes a key factor for Indonesia to remain competitive compared to other investment destination countries in the region,” Rizal said. As for the first-half 2026 investment realisation, it successfully absorbed 1.44 million workers, a 15 per cent increase compared to the same period the previous year, according to records from the Ministry of Investment and Downstreaming/BKPM. Rizal views this increase in job absorption as a positive development, but not yet sufficient to conclude that the investment has been of high quality. “The measure of investment success is not only determined by the number of jobs created, but more importantly by productivity, wage levels, technology transfer, improvement of workforce skills, and the amount of added value generated,” he said. For this reason, according to Rizal, the orientation of investment policy needs to shift from merely pursuing the amount of realisation towards investment that is more productive, inclusive, and sustainable, so as to strengthen the competitiveness of national industry while improving public welfare.