The British Chamber of Commerce Indonesia has just released its Business Confidence Index 2019 (BCI). BCI is a B2B survey of European investors domiciled in Indonesia that provides a series of snapshots on the economy and government performance that reflect the overall confidence of business towards revenue, head-count, profit, and future investment.

BritCham Indonesia highlighted the following findings in this year’s index:

• While the sentiment is less favourable for hospitality, travel & tourism and food & beverage sectors, the outlook remains very positive for infrastructure & construction and significantly improved in education.
• There is a very positive outlook improvement on the political environment and a positive trend on regulatory and legal environment.
• There are rising concerns on the impact of the protectionism.
• Sentiment suggests that business will be less challenged by the regulatory environment, bureaucratic inefficiency, custom & import regulation and political & social stability.
• However, a higher percentage remain undecided regarding major investment.
• There is a clear expectation of improvement in government attitude towards business.
• With the positive perception towards the government, a modest positive impact on business is expected.
• The impact of the economic stimulus packages remains like 2017/2018.

Business Outlook

• The business outlook is still relatively stable compared to last year.
• The outlook for Hospitality/Travel and Food & Beverage is less positive than last year.
• Business activity has expanded in Sumatera and Sulawesi and there are continued expansion plans in Bali and East Java.

Factors Affecting Business

• While Macroeconomic outlook still shows a positive trend, they remain concerned about corruption and labour party, there is renewed concern towards terrorism.
• The outlook for future investment overall remains quite positive.

Government Policy

• Positive opinion towards Government Policy & Regulations is translated into a more positive business impact.
• European business remains not positively impacted by the stimulus package.

Business Confidence index

• Business Confidence Index has stabilized after last year’s first increase in 4 years­­­­­­­­.

To view the entire Business Confidence Index, please click the link to download the document below.