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Airlangga accuses foreign interests of sabotaging RI’s semiconductor development
The government has accused foreign interests of sabotaging Indonesia’s semiconductor industry development, with a minister claiming that actors in neighboring countries were using environmental arguments to slow investment in the archipelago.
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Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto speaks before the press about government's economic stand on the Iran-Israel conflict at his Jakarta office on Apr. 16, 2024. (JP/Deni Ghifari)
T
he government has accused foreign interests of sabotaging Indonesia’s semiconductor industry development, with Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto claiming that actors in neighboring countries were using environmental arguments to slow investment in the archipelago.
“Singapore and Malaysia are unhappy; that’s why [their] nongovernmental organizations keep making a ruckus, so that Indonesia does not enter the semiconductor industry,” Airlangga said on Saturday, as reported by CNBC Indonesia.
He said Indonesia had once produced semiconductor components but the investors had ended up moving to Malaysia because of a set of regulations, which he did not specify.
Airlangga proceeded to say that Indonesia “must get” those investors back and said Malaysia had become more advanced in chip production than Indonesia, whose capabilities stopped at testing and assembling.
He said China was interested in producing semiconductor wafers on Indonesian soil in connection with an industrial megaproject on Rempang Island, Riau Islands province.
In July last year, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo secured a commitment for investment worth $11.5 billion from China’s Xinyi to build one of the world’s largest glass and solar panel manufacturing facilities on Rempang, which has large reserves of quartz and silica sand, both crucial raw materials in the photovoltaic industry.
The area where Xinyi is to build its plant is also the site of a planned industrial center in the Rempang Eco-City project, which will also include tourism sites, housing and a solar-power plant, among many other planned facilities.
