Indonesia Targets Tech Investors by Developing Critical Minerals and Renewable Energy Potential

The increasingly massive development of digitalisation technology is also driving competition among countries in the Southeast Asian or ASEAN region to attract the world’s technology giants, from Microsoft to Google.

This competition cannot be separated from the sheer size of ASEAN’s digital market potential, which is projected to reach trillions of US dollars by 2030, so the race to build data centre infrastructure, cloud services and artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystems continues to intensify.

Facing this competition, the government — according to Cahyo Purnomo, Director for East Asia, South Asia, Middle East and Africa Promotion at the Ministry of Investment and Downstreaming/BKPM — continues to improve Indonesia’s competitiveness in attracting technology giant investment so that the country can compete fairly with Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia.

Currently, technology investment flows into ASEAN, including Indonesia, such as Bytedance, which has realised investment of Rp 730 billion. In addition, a Middle Eastern company has already built investment in Batam, so Indonesia is assured of not being left behind in attracting technology company investment.

At present, semiconductors and the digital economy are priority programmes for the government, and efforts to encourage investment development and the ecosystem in this sector continue to be pushed. These efforts are carried out by strengthening infrastructure, including energy availability through renewable energy, as well as downstreaming critical minerals as an attraction for technology giant investment in Indonesia.