Why would they pay Indonesian labor when they can choose Filipinos, they speak better English and more westernized. Also with such little foreign influence including diaspora, hiring Indonesian is uncharted territory for most of them.
You tell me. I’m Indonesian
Jokes aside, foreign business is skittish with Indonesia mostly because of the rampant power of the ormas, which are various groups “representing” people similar to unions, but on a more bit-of-everything level. That means that you have to bend a lot and dispense plenty of “lubrication” to the local mafias/unions/religious groups/gangsters if you want to get anything done, unless you’re an obvious big corpo that can muscle their way thru; at that point you’re dealing more with the more powerful gangster called “the government”.
Indonesia is also notorious for metric tons of bureaucratic red-taping. It’s already less than how it was, but it’s still significantly annoying enough to deter most foreign events such as concerts in lieu of SG. Did i mention the govt also wants several fingers in the pie as well? If you’re a tech/manufacturing company, the govt also currently is focusing on downstreaming, meaning that they want you to localize productions to boost local growth after decades of missing out on that. Some companies are required to have a percentage of a product made locally if they want the tax incentive.
Indo does have plenty of competitive workers that can compete with the Pinoys. It’s just that we’re more used to figuring it out ourselves by freelancing or by getting hired outside because the govt hasn’t been exactly the most effective at promoting indonesia until the last decade or so.
So uuh…if you got any dollars to spare, we’d appreciate it. It goes a loooong way for us to be paid in a better currency, even if it’s sing dollar (singapore’s like the dream working spot for indonesians. Good infrastructure, has MRT that goes everywhere, easy to go everywhere, and you can actually come back to indo and feel like a rich man).