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ndonesia saw a significant jump in the number of investors after the expanded coverage to additional securities of the obligatory Single Investor Identification (SID).

According to the Indonesian Central Securities Depository (KSEI), there has been a 70 percent jump in the number of portfolio investors to 850,000 as of November from 500,000 investors recorded in September.

The higher figure was attributed to a recent decision made by the KSEI, the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX), the Financial Services Authority (OJK) and Bank Indonesia (BI) to expand SID coverage to also include the holders of the government’s and BI’s securities.

Following the implementation, as many as 104,000 investors holding government debt papers (SBN) and BI certificates (SBI) have been included in SID.

SID refers to a single identity, which investors can use to monitor their securities ownership, data transfer and other data related to transactions carried out on the IDX.

BI deputy governor Ronald Waas said that with the expansion of SID, data of SBN holders could be consolidated to expedite the policy-making process on the government bonds.

“Policy making on transactions will be more precise,” Ronald said in Jakarta recently.

SID was first implemented in 2012 for investors purchasing the shares of publicly listed companies. In August 2016, the coverage was expanded to include mutual fund investors, KSEI president director Friderica Widyasari Dewi said.

Similar to Ronald, Friderica said the SID enabled capital market authorities to monitor all the securities transactions conducted by the investors and to avoid misuse or manipulation of customers’ accounts.

IDX trading and membership director Alpino Kianjaya said it hoped prospective investors would be compelled to begin investing in stocks now that the transactions have been made transparent. A series of campaigns have been launched to increase public participation in the capital market. One of them, “Yuk Nabung Saham” (Let’s Invest in Stock), was introduced in November 2015.

The campaign provides information on the definition of stock, investment and the benefit of investing compared to saving money in time deposits.

However, data reveal that the investors are not equally spread out across the country. Around 46.9 percent of them reside in Java, 32.1 percent of which come from Jakarta.

Sumatra ranks second with 11.91 percent, followed by Kalimantan with 3.69 percent.

Alpino said the IDX would travel simultaneously to areas across the nation to provide information and an understanding to citizens about the benefit of investing their money in publicly listed companies.

It also looks to attract young people to set aside some of their money to save in stocks. Young investors, aged below 20 years old, only account for 1.7 percent of the total 850,000 investors.

The IDX’s own campaign for students is now running at 13 universities in several regions until December. (wnd)