Indonesia is not unaware of this challenge. The Online Single Submission system aims to consolidate licensing through a single digital portal. Recent regulatory adjustments, such as the Government Regulation 28/2025, aim to clarify timelines and improve inter-agency coordination.
These reforms are significant in design. Whether enforcement is consistent across investors’ touchpoints, from ministries to regional governments and ports, is another matter.
President Prabowo Subianto’s high approval ratings, surpassing levels recorded by his two predecessors, offer political space to rationalise overlapping authorities and enforce administrative discipline. Whether that capital translates into measurable improvements in bureaucratic performance remains to be seen.
In a reminder that investors prefer implementation over rhetoric, Moody’s recently revised Indonesia’s credit outlook to negative, citing governance quality and policy predictability as areas of concern.
Indonesia will remain attractive, given its market size and resource base. But when tariff policy abroad is unsettled, reliability at home becomes the differentiator.
My aunties are right that numbers matter. But the decisive number may not be the tariff percentage announced in a press release. It is the number of days between a signed agreement and a cleared container at port.
Sondang Grace Sirait is a strategic communicator and policy advocate based in Jakarta. This commentary first appeared on the Lowy Institute’s site, The Interpreter.
