What will President Jokowi's energy policy priorities be in his second term?

Following the re-election of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) in April 2019, much attention is focused on his second term policy agenda and the potential for bold reforms to address Indonesia’s development challenges.   

Despite being blessed with an abundance of natural resources, South-East Asia’s largest economy has developed a growing oil and gas trade deficit as it grapples with rapidly rising energy demand from a population of over 260m. This has posed problems for policymakers as they seek to generate sufficient state revenues from the country’s resource wealth while also ensuring a reliable nationwide energy supply to support the growth of industries and meet the needs of aspirational citizens.   

On a recent visit to Jakarta, OBG’s regional editor for Asia, Patrick Cooke, met with energy expert Darmawan Prasodjo, who is the deputy chief of staff responsible for energy and infrastructure oversight in the office of the president and also commissioner of state electricity firm PT PLN (Persero).  Their lively podcast discussion focused on the potential for investment in Indonesia’s upstream assets, the impact of so-called ‘resource nationalisation’ policies on international investor sentiment, the prospects for further improvements in the business environment in order to ease the process of developing power plants, and possible changes in Indonesia’s energy mix.