Indonesia: an intriguing market for investors

Indonesia hasn't lived up to the potential shown when president Joao Widodo came to power in 2014. But patient investors may one day be rewarded.

Joko Widodo, Indonesia's president © Muhammad Fadli/Bloomberg via Getty Images
President Joko Widodo is coming to resemble Indonesia’s oligarchy
(Image credit: Joko Widodo, Indonesia's president © Muhammad Fadli/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“There are cruel limits to how much and how fast a nation can change,” says Una Galani on Breakingviews. Observers had high hopes for Indonesian president Joko Widodo (known as “Jokowi”) when he came to power in 2014. But instead of taking on his nation’s “entrenched oligarchy”, which has long held back development, he has increasingly “come to resemble” it.

A new biography by Ben Bland praises Jokowi for his efforts to remove red tape and boost infrastructure spending, but also criticises a government marked by “protectionist instincts” and capricious policymaking. A case in point was last year’s decision to spend $33bn on moving the capital city out of Jakarta and into the jungle of East Kalimantan.

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.