Luhut: China Cannot Regulate Indonesia, We Are The Ones Who Determine The Investment Scheme

Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment (Kemenko Marves) Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan. (Photo: Doc. Kemenko Marves)

JAKARTA - Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan revealed several reasons why Indonesia is so attached to China in working on government projects. One of them is because China is the most responsive and quick to respond to government requests.

"So we shouldn't bully ourselves. We cooperated with China because China was the quickest to respond to our requests," he said at the 2021 National Coordination Meeting and Investment Service Award, Wednesday, November 24.

Even so, Luhut ensured that Indonesia was not regulated by China. He emphasized that it was China that would follow the investment scheme arranged by the government.

"There is no debt that we are afraid of because what we are doing is B2B (business to business). We are all doing technology transfer. Everything we are doing is first-class technology. They let their employees from Indonesia all be done in stages because we don't have any," he said.

For your information, based on BKPM data, China is the third-largest investor in Indonesia this year after Singapore and Hong Kong. The amount of Chinese investment in the January to September period reached 2.3 billion US dollars or 10 percent of the total foreign investment in Indonesia.

Not only with China, said Luhut, but many countries are also flocking to want to invest in Indonesia. The government also continues to open up opportunities for cooperation in various sectors with many countries, especially to support downstreaming.

Therefore, Luhut denied that the government was only cooperating with China. For example, Indonesia is also exploring plans for cooperation with the UK for battery, cathode, and precursor products.