Indonesia Must Earn Its Place as a World Growth Engine

By Teguh Anantawikrama - Vice Chairman for Technology and Digital Transformation, Kadin Indonesia

INVESTORTRUST - The world needs new sources of growth that can sustain demand, expand productive capacity, and keep international commerce connected. Indonesia has an opportunity to help meet that need. But becoming a world growth engine requires more than a large market and abundant resources. It requires the ability to turn those advantages into competitive industries, productive employment, and partnerships that create value across borders.

This is the significance of Indonesia’s business presence at the B20 Summit in Washington, DC. The participation of Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairman Anindya Novyan Bakrie, listed in the discussion on “Trade: Shifting Global Markets,” provides a platform to advance a stronger proposition: Indonesia can help shape the next cycle of global growth. The challenge is to connect that international message with credible execution at home.

Indonesia’s economic performance provides a foundation for that argument. The economy expanded by 5.47 percent year on year in the third quarter of 2026, supported by steady household consumption and improved exports. Yet resilience must be interpreted carefully. A strong quarterly result demonstrates economic capacity; it does not, by itself, establish a durable transformation in productivity or competitiveness. The task is to convert growth momentum into a stronger productive base.

A global growth engine contributes through several channels. Its consumers generate demand for goods and services. Its enterprises supply competitive products to international markets. Its investment creates opportunities for technology providers, financiers, and business partners. Its innovations improve productivity beyond its borders. Indonesia should pursue all four channels, ensuring that greater integration with the world also strengthens domestic capabilities and household prosperity.

The first priority is to deepen industrial value creation. Downstream processing should become the starting point for a broader industrial ecosystem encompassing engineering, components, maintenance, research, and advanced manufacturing. Success should be measured by the capabilities developed around an investment: the suppliers that improve their standards, the workers who acquire transferable skills, and the domestic enterprises that become competitive enough to export. Industrial policy delivers lasting value when knowledge and commercial opportunity spread through the economy.

Energy is central to this ambition. Manufacturers, digital businesses, and logistics operators need reliable electricity at competitive costs. Indonesia should therefore treat energy development as an integral part of its growth strategy, linking generation, transmission, industrial demand, and credible financing. Clear procurement rules and predictable contracts would help translate international interest into investable projects. Each successful project should strengthen both energy security and the competitiveness of the businesses it serves.

The second priority is to make government efficiency an economic advantage. Investors experience the state through permits, customs procedures, land administration, taxation, and the consistency of decisions across agencies. Digital transformation should simplify these experiences. Secure data exchange, interoperable systems, and clear institutional responsibility can reduce repeated submissions and shorten the distance between an investment decision and actual production. The relevant measure is the time and cost saved by businesses and citizens.

This agenda directly supports productivity. The World Bank’s June 2026 assessment identifies regulatory reform, trade facilitation, and better logistics as important to Indonesia’s competitiveness and integration into global value chains. These reforms deserve sustained attention because they improve the operating conditions of existing enterprises while making new investment more viable. Predictability allows businesses to plan, hire, and commit capital with greater confidence.

The third priority is to give smaller enterprises a practical route into larger markets. Connecting an Indonesian business to a global buyer requires product consistency, certification, dependable delivery, working capital, and commercial trust. Digital platforms can facilitate introductions, but those foundations determine whether transactions continue. KADIN can help organize supplier development around actual purchasing requirements, linking large investors and exporters with capable local enterprises and vocational institutions.

This is where Anindya Bakrie’s international engagement can generate enduring value. KADIN can translate conversations at B20 into partnerships with defined commercial objectives, accountable counterparts, and implementation milestones. A manufacturer seeking suppliers, a technology company seeking local partners, or an infrastructure investor seeking viable projects should encounter a prepared Indonesian ecosystem. Business diplomacy becomes more effective when opportunities are documented and follow-through is organized.

Indonesia should also advance an international position rooted in openness and mutual benefit. Diversified partnerships can broaden access to capital, technology, and markets while reducing excessive dependence on any single relationship. That approach requires credible standards and consistent treatment of investors. The confidence Indonesia seeks abroad must be supported by the reliability businesses experience within its borders.

The follow-up to B20 should therefore be concrete: a focused pipeline of projects, supplier partnerships, workforce programs, and policy bottlenecks requiring resolution. Progress should be assessed through investment realized, commercial production started, export contracts fulfilled, and better jobs created. These outcomes would give substance to Indonesia’s claim to global economic leadership.

Indonesia has a compelling growth story to tell. Its next chapter must show how international ambition becomes domestic capability—and how domestic capability contributes to shared prosperity. Indonesia will earn its place as a world growth engine when businesses across the world can grow with it, and Indonesians can see that growth reflected in better livelihoods.