JAKARTA, April 17 — Apple Inc will look into building a manufacturing facility in Indonesia, its chief executive officer said today after meeting President Joko Widodo, who hoped the tech giant would increase its local content by partnering with domestic firms.
Apple’s Tim Cook arrived in Jakarta yesterday after visiting Vietnam. He met with Jokowi, as the president is popularly known, and will inaugurate its fourth developer academy on the island of Bali.
“We talked about the president’s desire to see manufacturing in the country, and it is something that we will look at,” he told the press after the meeting.
Apple has no manufacturing facilities in Indonesia, but since 2018, it has been setting up app developer academies, which, including the new academy, have a total cost of 1.6 trillion rupiah (RM474.2 million).
Indonesia’s industry minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita, who also attended the meeting, said that if Apple decided to build a manufacturing facility in Indonesia, it would have the capacity to produce for export.
“We will discuss how Apple’s facility in Indonesia could become a global supply chain,” he said, adding that the government said that even if Apple did not build a factory, it could partner with Indonesian companies to obtain components.
Apple has met Indonesia’s 35 per cent local content requirement to sell its products by investing in developer academies, but the government hopes that number can be pushed higher with a manufacturing facility.
Apple has based much of its key manufacturing of iPads, AirPods, and Apple Watches in Vietnam; suppliers of MacBooks are also investing in the country.
Indonesia has a huge, tech-savvy population, making the Southeast Asian nation a key target market for tech-related investment.
— Reuters
