Airlangga Says Data Centers Key to Digital Economy
JAKARTA, DDTCNews - The government believes that the development of data centre infrastructure in Indonesia constitutes one of the foundations for driving digital economic growth.
Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, Airlangga Hartarto, is of the view that the digital economy is one of the key aspects for pushing national economic growth to the 8% level. He believes data centres could be a game-changer for the Indonesian economy.
"Indonesia seeks to grow by more than 8% and one of the levers is the digital economy. The key, of course, is AI [artificial intelligence], and AI will only exist if the infrastructure, i.e., the data centres, is sound," he said on Wednesday (24/6/2026).
Further, Airlangga noted there are also attractive opportunities to draw investment into the data centre industry. This would lead to economic impacts, such as increasing investments, creating jobs and stimulating a number of supporting industries, including telecommunications, energy and technology tools.
According to him, Indonesia offers various competitive advantages for data centre industrial development. These include land availability, competitive energy prices and the support of diverse domestic energy sources, such as geothermal, solar and hydropower.
"The government is also continuously preparing various supporting infrastructure to ensure reliable energy availability for the development of data centres across various regions of Indonesia," Airlangga explained.
In addition to data centre development, the government is also promoting the strengthening of the national semiconductor industry through cooperation with the British global technology company, ARM, for chip design development.
This measure is expected to serve as a foundation for the development of future technologies, including AI, the internet of things (IoT), autonomous vehicles (self-driving cars) and quantum computing.
In the context of supporting the development of this ecosystem, Airlangga stated that the government will provide training for 15,000 young talents in the semiconductor sector over the next 3 years.
Airlangga hopes the training programme will increase the number and improve the quality of the national workforce, whilst also fostering the emergence of a generation of digital engineers capable of competing at a global level. In his view, data centres, digital human resources and the semiconductor industry must all be developed concurrently to ensure Indonesia does not fall behind in the global digital economic competition.
In the foreseeable future, the government will continue to strengthen digital cooperation at the regional level through the ASEAN Digital Economic Framework Agreement (DEFA). It is hoped that the agreement can be signed at the ASEAN Summit at the earliest opportunity.
"With the implementation of the DEFA, the digital economic potential of ASEAN is projected to increase significantly, providing greater opportunities for Indonesia to strengthen its position as one of the region's digital economic hubs," said Airlangga. (rig)
