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Roadmap to highlight AI's investment potential: deputy

minister

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AI roadmap to guide developers on infrastructure and

computational clusters

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Indonesia offers U.S. joint investment in critical

minerals amid

tariff talks: official

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Indonesia's AI development hindered by lack of

infrastructure,

skilled workforce: analyst

By Stanley Widianto

JAKARTA, July 22 (Reuters) - Indonesia will finish work

next month on its first national strategy on artificial

intelligence in a bid to attract foreign investment, an official

said, as Southeast Asia's largest economy looks to join the

global AI and chip-making race.

The move follows neighbouring Malaysia's push to establish

itself as a regional hub for AI development, securing billions

of dollars from global tech firms seeking to build critical

infrastructure to meet growing demand for cloud and AI services.

Indonesia's AI roadmap will be the first comprehensive AI

document in the country, the fourth largest in the world by

population, since a smaller ethics guideline in 2023, Deputy

Minister of Communications and Digital Nezar Patria told Reuters

in an interview at his office on Monday.

"The roadmap will help AI developers navigate (Indonesia's

market), including on infrastructure and also on computational

clusters," he said, adding that it would detail AI adoption in

sectors such as health and agriculture.

Nezar said the roadmap was designed to establish the

country's AI ecosystem.

"This will give an idea to investors about the potential of

AI use in Indonesia," he said. "We're hoping they are interested

in investing their capital in Indonesia."

An April report by Boston Consulting Group said ASEAN

nations were positioned for substantial AI-driven gains, with

GDP contributions ranging from 2.3% to 3.1% by 2027, and

Indonesia projected to see the highest impact in terms of

absolute gross domestic output growth.

But despite some investments, development has been slow in

Indonesia compared to other parts of the region.

Nvidia ( NVDA ) was involved with Indonesia's biggest tech

company GoTo Gojek Tokopedia for a large language

model service last year, and supplied its chips to the

telecommunications company Indosat.

Microsoft ( MSFT ) also said last year it would invest $1.7

billion over the next few years into expanding cloud services

and AI in Indonesia.

"We're opening up to all global tech companies to get into

the industry of AI development in Indonesia," Nezar said.

Separately, Indonesia is also pitching foreign firms on its

critical minerals, which are needed for hardware development, in

order to secure a bigger share of the global

semiconductor supply chain, he added.

Indonesia has offered the United States the chance to

jointly invest in a critical minerals project as part of its

tariff negotiations. Washington has sought to find alternative

suppliers to China, which dominates the sector but in April

added some rare earths to its export restriction list in

retaliation for U.S. tariffs.

Damar Juniarto, an analyst from research centre PIKAT

Demokrasi, which monitors AI safety in Indonesia, said the

country was not ready to be an AI developer owing to a lack of

infrastructure such as chips, and a lack of AI skills in the

workforce.

Nezar said there remained risks of misinformation,

intellectual property and data leaks. He did not detail how the

roadmap would address those issues.