Indonesian Minister on Tourism Recovery, Digital Economy

So you're in China, you're on a mission. What Give me the details of who you're going to be meeting with and how important it is to get the Chinese tourists to come to Indonesia. This is absolutely critical because before COVID, China's top two or top three of tourist arrival into Indonesia. This year it is, it fell outside the top three and we need to work hard to convince Chinese tourists to come visit wonderful Indonesia. And in particular that we're developing beyond valley experience for Chinese tourists to experience. And this is something that I aim to be able to achieve with this trip. And with the sales missions of 1.3 million tourist arrival from China, you feel the pressure from the region. Thailand has the visa waivers. There's all kinds of things that are happening there to get. And the Chinese by most accounts are going to Thailand. What where are you right now on the visa waiver front? We're into the final stage. I think it will come just before Pat Jokowi and his term and our term in October. And I believe Pat Prabhu's strategy of continuity will actually also focus on tourism in terms of inviting more tourists to come from all over the world, in particular from China. What are the biggest challenges in addition to, of course, getting that visa waiver. I mean, have you seen the spending patterns here? And the Chinese economy is slow. They're cautious. The consumer sentiment is pretty low. We actually have tracked this through our big data analysis. And top of mind of Chinese tourists is still Bali and they like to have the nature, culture and adventure experience. But increasingly this younger Chinese tourists would like to experience the other 3 S of Sansi and San into serenity, spirituality and sustainability. So tremendously, the post COVID number have increased 40 to 50%. It was about $900 per packs pre COVID. Now we're experiencing about 1500 to 1600 per pack. So we're looking into more quality tourist arrival, people who stay longer and people who spend to local economy. And you got to cut red tape, right? President Jokowi basically saying that's holding back big events. I mean, look, Singapore killed everybody in the region by having Taylor Swift, right? They have F1. What do you, what can you offer? Well, we have Moto GP and we are going to also add more events. Bruno Mars is coming to town, but we're going to have the Taylor Swift of the world. You know, I really prayed for the next concert as big as Taylor Swift, but we're going to have the Pope. Pope Francis is coming. So it's going to be huge for the region. So we're opening up. I think we got a lot of interest for this September visit by the Pope into Indonesia. And this is going to be good for tourism. Now you're the tourism minister, but also the creative economy minister. So I'm sure you part of your remit is to get businesses, part of the creative economy to come to Indonesia as well. Is that part of your discussions here? I just talked to the Malaysian Economic Affairs minister. They are attracting all kinds of investment in AI and data centers, chip companies from China, not only United States, China. What can you and the digital economy minister essentially attract? Well, the creative economy includes the digital economy and we just finished the discussions on digital economy framework agreement within ASEAN. Indonesia is top destinations for investments for Chinese investors, but also globally as well. We are transforming our digital economy. We're the largest digital economy in ASEAN. I think 150 billion U.S. dollars by next year will be recorded for the largest jump in the digital economy. We're seeing investments from NVIDIA and other AI related theme coming to Indonesia. And this is also my mandate to not only create investments into the creative economy and digital economy space, but also push more exports into the creative economy products, digital economy products and services from Indonesia. That is reaching about $25 billion this year and it's going to increase by 1015% next year. And you think it's important to maintain your non aligned status between picking sides, China or the United States, the global S, you're the biggest population, one of the biggest populations in the so-called global S. It is in our constitutions that we will be independent and active international players. Paprabo will be very active in the international arena. His first trip as president-elect is to China, but we are maintaining very close working relationship with all our partners around the globe. Are there any negotiations or talks or whispers from Chinese companies that say, hey, if we invest in Indonesia, we manufacture in Indonesia, we can kind of avoid sanctions on products that are re exported potentially to the United States or tariffs, I should say. It would be a win, win, win situations for everybody to work closer together. We have a large EV ecosystem mandate that we're developing and China made EV products have made to Indonesia. But we want to increase more investments into the manufacturing side and to the down streaming of the processing of the industrial processing goods, raw materials in the batteries, in the batteries, also the services and the entire supply chain that we're developing because Indonesia is the largest market in Southeast Asia. So we need to work together with the best of the best within the industry.