"Infrastructure in Indonesia must be addressed quickly because with bad infrastructure investors won`t be able to make operate here," said Zamroni Salim, an economist with the Habibie Center, on Wednesday.
He said cooperation among ASEAN member countries should be strengthened in this regard and improved infrastructure would gain better support from investors` countries.
"Especially in the matter of roads, it`s an important factor because investors will only be able to supply their production bases well if the roads are in good condition," he said, adding that political stability was also important to keep the investment climate in Indonesia favorable.
He said it was not really difficult to market the products because ASEAN is still a potential market for trading.
Indonesia has shown positive signals but the infrastructure such as roads, bridge, harbors, and energy supply are the main problems for this ASEAN largest member country.
Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) chairman Sofyan Wanandi said on Monday (Jan 31), infrastructure development was the key to enhance manufacturing industries, which currently were less developed than natural resource-based and service industries.
Wanandi added that infrastructure problems were one of the main reasons why Southeast Asia`s largest economy had lower growth than other fast-growing countries such as China.
"The significant increasing of the state budget (APBN) in recent years did not improve the infrastructure improvement," Wanandi said, adding that country APBN is reached to 1,200 trillion rupiahs.(*)
Editor: Aditia Maruli Radja
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