Jokowi: Licensing For The Ruwet Event, Indonesia Left Behind Taylor Swift's Concert

JAKARTA - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) highlighted the complicated licensing process for organizing events, which caused Indonesia to miss the American pop singer Taylor Swift concert.

According to Jokowi, Indonesia is less fast than Singapore in matters of licensing the event, ease of access, and services to bring in these international artists.

"We know that Taylor Swift's recently held (concert) in Singapore last March. He held six days in Singapore and Singapore was the only ASEAN country to host it," he said at the Inauguration of the Digitization of Event Implementation Licensing Services, Monday, June 24.

The President also believes that half of Taylor Swift's 360,000.000 fans who watch concerts in Singapore are Indonesians.

"What happens if we flock to watch it to Singapore? There is such a thing as capital outflows. The flow of money from Indonesia to Singapore. We lose. Losing money is not only to buy tickets, but loss Indonesian money to pay for hotels, food, for transportation," said Jokowi.

Apart from Taylor Swift, President Jokowi said that the complicated licensing process was the reason Coldplay only held one concert in Indonesia in November last year.

In fact, in other countries such as Singapore and Thailand, the British band appeared for several days due to the great enthusiasm of the audience.

"I make sure that more than half (the audience) is from Indonesia, because tickets have only been spent in 20 minutes (sold), but I can't add more. Why? I asked the organizers, because our licensing is indeed complicated," said Jokowi.

"In fact, what I heard was the quality of the sound system sound during Coldplay at GBK with those there (outside the country), that's good here. This is what we have to applaud. But (Indonesia) can only be a day. This is what we have to finish," he said, adding.

Based on Travel and Tourism Development Index 2024 data, Indonesia's ranking rose from 32 to 22.

Even so, Indonesia is still lagging behind other Asian countries such as Japan, China, South Korea, and Singapore.