Indonesian firms push for stronger trade ties with Hong Kong, eye opening family offices, investing in energy, logistics and transport sectors
- Delegation meets city leader John Lee to discuss creating opportunities for Indonesian companies looking to tap into local, mainland Chinese markets
- ‘We have discussed a number of opportunities concerning how Hong Kong can be utilised as a hub for family businesses in Indonesia,’ delegate says
“We see that there is still so much space for improving our trade and investment bilateral ties, and we’ve seen that Indonesia and Hong Kong need to enhance our trade and investment cooperation,” association chairwoman Shinta Widjaja Kamdani told the press after the closed-door meeting.
The association plays a prime role in strategic business cooperation between foreign companies and Indonesian enterprises spanning 34 provincial and 269 district boards.
Kamdani also serves as CEO of Sintesa Group, a firm with a portfolio covering energy services, property, and industrial and consumer products.
“We have discussed a number of opportunities concerning how Hong Kong can be utilised as a hub for family businesses in Indonesia,” she said. “We are exploring what Hong Kong also has to offer in order to facilitate our entry into Hong Kong and also to mainland China.”
Alongside Kamdani, the 20-strong delegation included 15 business leaders representing the country’s big industries such as oil and gas, manufacturing and property.
She stopped short of specifying the scale of any prospective investments, but said business talks were at the “beginning stage” as many potentially interested Indonesian companies would be first-time investors in the Hong Kong market.
Kamdani said businesses from her country were specifically eyeing sectors such as logistics, transport and energy transition, since Hong Kong’s well-developed infrastructure and Indonesia’s advanced manufacturing provided opportunities to mutually benefit from investment.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations comprises the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
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Kamdani said on Wednesday that many investments were in the pipeline following Lee’s trip, adding that medium- and large-sized Indonesian companies unfamiliar with Hong Kong were eager to explore using the city as a gateway to the mainland.
“Our target is really bringing in new players,” she said, adding firms in the country felt encouraged to open family offices in Hong Kong as they saw the city’s value as a financial hub.
Gary Ng, a senior economist at corporate and investment bank Natixis Hong Kong, said Singapore had always shared a stronger tie with Indonesia.
He added Hong Kong was likely to become an alternative hub for some firms that wanted to export products to the mainland market.
But he said it was too early to say whether more direct investment from the country would be injected into the city’s economy, as the Indonesian delegation was only visiting to learn about the Hong Kong market status quo.
Ng said there were many such observation tours for the business sector, but that he believed more of these types of meetings were now publicised because the government was keen to show it had been active in promoting the city.
“I do not think this [meeting] will be a game changer, or in any way stimulate more foreign investors coming to Hong Kong,” he said.
The latest figures from the Hong Kong Trade Development Council showed Indonesia was Hong Kong’s 22nd-largest trading partner in 2022 and its sixth-largest among Asean members that year.
Hong Kong’s exports to Indonesia amounted to US$2.6 billion in 2022, while imports to the city from the country reached US$3.1 billion.
Additional reporting by Oscar Liu
