Jakarta. Indonesia is ready to roll out the red carpet to make way for the $1.7 billion investment from the American tech giant Microsoft by offering various incentives, according to senior minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.
Microsoft recently made headlines for its plans to invest $1.7 billion over the next four years to advance Indonesia’s new cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. This marks the single largest investment in Microsoft’s 29-year history in the country. Microsoft’s chief executive officer Satya Nadella unveiled the investment plan when he came to Jakarta earlier this week. During his visit, Nadella also had a meeting with President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo for some investment talks.
On the sidelines of Friday’s Jakarta Futures Forum, Luhut talked to reporters about the incentives that Microsoft would get for investing in Indonesia.
“Yes, [we will provide] various types [of incentives],” Luhut told the press.
“We are competing with others. No matter what, we have to be competitive [with the other countries]. We should not hold back,” Luhut said.
This was not the first time that Luhut made such a promise for Microsoft’s investment. At the recent “Microsoft Build: AI Day”, Luhut told the company that they would not need to look elsewhere, while promising that Indonesia could treat them better than other countries.
“Microsoft, if you are going to invest in Indonesia, you are not going to regret it. I promise you. Any incentives that you get anywhere, you can get it here. … We are more than happy to accommodate. The incentives that you get in India, Thailand, anywhere … We can give you better incentives,” Luhut said on Tuesday.
Microsoft recently announced a similar investment deal for close neighbor Malaysia. However, Malaysia gets about a $2.2 billion investment commitment from Microsoft to build its cloud and AI infrastructure, among other things. The company not long ago also announced plans to build its first regional data center in Thailand.
