This post is about what I know regarding the digital economy in Indonesia. Indonesia (and indeed the whole world) is currently caught up in the hype of Industry 4.0, the digital economy, the Internet of Things, and similar trends. Digitalization seems unavoidable. While globalization has been fading, data exchange has been growing exponentially. Some of this content also appears in a collaborative book by PPI Australia on Realizing Indonesia 4.0. That book covers much more, including the impact of digitalization on healthcare, education, and more.
Recently, Indonesia has been buzzing about the MoU between Indonesia and LG Energy Solution, a South Korean battery cell manufacturer. The deal roughly entails LG Energy Solution making a massive upstream-to-downstream investment in battery cell production in Indonesia. My colleague Wishnu Mahraddika and I wrote about this at The Conversation Indonesia. We were fairly optimistic about this development and hoped it would become a momentum for the automotive industry in Indonesia, particularly in electric vehicles.
Traveling isn’t really my forte. However, The year-end free entry to Tidbinbilla Natural Reserve can’t really be missed can’t it?
Tidbinbilla is a natural reserve in Canberra, Australia. Reachable from the city center by car, and you would prolly need around 40 minutes driving to get there. Here, you can walk in many bushwalking trail from the very easy, 1-2 km to the hard one with rocky and hilly climb. You will be able to see many Australian vegetation like eucalyptus and also its animals like birds, Kangaroos, Wallabies, Koala and Platypus.
This semester has been incredibly busy. Lots of work, a presentation for one of my dissertation milestones, and teaching. On the teaching front, I was fortunate that during the pandemic, when the university cut staff heavily, I was among those kept on. The problem is that with fewer hires, I got buried in marking – checking assignments and final exams. Very stressful.
COVID-19 has certainly hit exports and imports. However, in recent months, Indonesia’s trade balance has been showing increasing signs of surplus. I often explain that Indonesian manufacturing is heavily linked to Global Value Chains (GVCs), so imports are needed for production and exports. Of course, amid COVID-19, production appears to have been hampered, and Indonesia’s imports of semi-finished goods and capital seem to have declined. The government also dislikes imports, especially expensive capital imports that erode the rupiah.
I discussed this theme in my medium blog(https://medium.com/@imedkrisna/extending-a-simple-2-period-consumption-problem-the-third-period-afterlife-9223cf5467d). I recycle this with a bit of an addition to a more generalised utility function and exploiting python this time so I don’t have to do it by hand, which is nice. One reason why I left Medium ha ha ha.
Just a bit of stats on RCEP. To connect it a bit with the Global Value Chain, I am using Stage of Production (SoP) UNCTAD:
This post briefly discusses FDI developments in Indonesia.
The chart below shows Indonesia’s net FDI inflows as a percentage of GDP. The data source is the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.
A couple of weeks ago, a colleague of mine, Deasy Pane from Bappenas, invited me for a discussion about Indonesia’s trade and investment situation policy. Indeed, that’s the beauty of zoom right? Collabs know no boundaries! With us was Donny and Chandra, also trade anthusiast at ANU. Some of Bappenas’ employee were also there.
This is an updated figures on COVID-19-related goods export and import in Indonesia. I was once presenting about it in ANU Indonesia Project’s global seminar series, and I cited Indonesian monthly trade data until March 2020. WCO/WHO classification second edition was used to identify what are considered COVID-19-related goods.