Investment Minister: Foreign Investors Still Complain About Indonesia's Investment Climate - KONTAN
JAKARTA. Foreign investors are still highlighting several obstacles in Indonesia’s investment climate, particularly related to permitting processes and cross-ministerial coordination. The government has promised to accelerate reforms to provide business certainty.
Investment Minister/Head of BKPM and CEO of Danantara, Rosan Perkasa Roeslani, revealed that various complaints emerged during a series of meetings with Japanese and South Korean businesspeople on the government’s working visit.
“If we look at it, the trip to Japan and Korea was highly productive,” Rosan stated in his remarks on Thursday (2/4/2026).
In those forums, the investors directly conveyed feedback, responses, and challenges they face to the President. According to Rosan, the government’s response was seen as very open and received positive appreciation from business actors.
Nevertheless, investors highlighted several barriers, especially processes deemed time-consuming due to involvement of multiple ministries and agencies.
“What they conveyed indeed relates to other ministries that require time, so it needs to be accelerated and expedited,” he explained.
In response to these complaints, the government conveyed ongoing efforts to strengthen acceleration through the formation of debottlenecking task forces and improved cross-ministerial coordination. Additionally, the government relies on time-certainty-based licensing policies via PP No. 28.
Rosan emphasised that the regulation enables the application of a positive fictitious mechanism, where permits are automatically issued if service time limits are not met by the relevant agencies.
“This was responded to very positively because it reduces uncertainty. If risks can be calculated, investors have no problem. But uncertainty that is hard to measure is what becomes a concern,” he said.
He added that the government is striving to minimise such uncertainty factors to improve the domestic investment climate and industry climate.
Amid these various notes, foreign investor interest in Indonesia remains high. Investment commitments from Japan are recorded at US$23.6 billion, while from South Korea at US$10.3 billion.
Even joint investment projects are being explored, including with Lotte Chemical and POSCO, with a potential value of around US$6 billion.
Rosan assessed that the presence of Indonesia’s sovereign wealth fund, Danantara, also boosts investor confidence for co-investments.
“This is a very good signal and we will follow it up so it can be realised soon,” he said.
The government also reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining national stability as a key factor in attracting long-term investments.
“And the President also conveyed that one of Indonesia’s strengths is our ability to always maintain peace and stability in Indonesia because that is the main capital for every investment, which is a long-term commitment to Indonesia,” Rosan concluded.