International Trade Blog

We may consider China and India the leading players in south-east Asia, but lets not forget Indonesia. Indonesia offers various opportunities for profit both for exporters and importers. So lets take a closer look at Indonesia.

Indonesia is an island based country and consists of 17508 island, but only about 6000 of them are inhabited. Statistically Indonesia is the 16th largest country in the world with a population of more than 200 million. The main religion is Islamic and you should keep that in mind when conducting business in Indonesia. Indonesia is a democratic country which in general is a good idea, but at the same time it is a good soil for corruption and the level of corruption in Indonesia is one of the highest in south-east Asia.

Indonesia has vast amounts of natural resources including crude oil, natural gas, tin copper and gold. In fact Indonesia is the largest tin market in the world. So there are a lot of opportunities to conduct business and earn some money.

The 1997 financial crisis in Asia hit Indonesia the hardest. The economic development slowed down and even decreased, at one point inflation grew to 77%, but Indonesia managed to recover and now its GDP is steadily growing. And although it might sound weir Indonesia should feel quite happy about the 1997 crisis, because due to that the current global crisis has had a minimal effect on Indonesia.

Indonesia’s main trade partners are Japan, USA and China ant the main exports are of course the natural resources and various. They mostly import equipment, chemicals and food. So there are quite a few opportunities for trade and profit.

The costs of labour force are very low as in most of Asian countries and this is due to the poverty level of Indonesia. From the humanitarian viewpoint this is of course very bad, but on the other side manufacturers are able to produce their goods at low costs and so the price of the goods is affordable even for the poorer part of the global population.