ith the reappointment of Sri Mulyani Indrawati as finance minister and more familiar faces joining the economic team of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in his second term, observers and business players are calling for progress in unfinished tasks that have hindered business in Indonesia.
“[The President] has assigned me to keep serving as finance minister and to use all fiscal policy [options] to help the relevant ministers improve economic resilience," Sri Mulyani told reporters after a meeting with Jokowi at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta on Tuesday.
Sri Mulyani is expected to bring about a policy breakthrough that creates a positive business environment through fiscal incentives and other tools to avoid a hard landing on Indonesia’s economy against the backdrop of the US-China trade war and global recession threats.
The former managing director of the World Bank outlined some of Jokowi’s priorities for his second and final term, including the development of small and medium enterprises, the utilization of economic tools that improve the country’s trade balance and current account and the formulation of policies that create jobs.
Sri Mulyani, who was also finance minister from 2005 to 2010 under Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is expected to spearhead sweeping tax reforms that lower the corporate income tax and tax digital economy multinationals operating in the country.
”Beyond the near term, bringing tax rates closer in line with the rest of the region would also likely help improve medium-term competitiveness and potential growth as it spurs private sector capex, particularly in the non-commodities sectors,” Morgan Stanley wrote in a recent report.
Higher economic growth created from the corporate tax cut would offset revenue loss from lower tax rates, according to the report co-authored by Morgan Stanley Asia economists Deyi Tan and Zac Su.
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