The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) potential investment in Indonesia’s housing sector will be in the form of business-to-business (B2B) cooperation between Indonesian and UAE entrepreneurs, said the Ministry of Housing and Residential Areas.
In an effort to support collaboration between the two countries in B2B, the Indonesian government directed state-owned companies to prepare passive land that can be used as the location of the investment project.
In regards with the potential investment of one million homes from the UAE government, the Indonesian Housing Task Force has identified that land assets owned by a number of ministries will be used for the project.
They include plots of land owned by the Ministry of State Secretariat, the Ministry of Finance, State railway company PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI), State-owned plantation company PT Perkebunan Nusantara (PTPN) and and State-owned property developer Perum Perumnas.
“Regarding plots of land allocated for housing investment from the UAE in the country, there will be a special policy involving State-owned Enterprises (SOEs),” Fahri Hamzah, Deputy Minister of Housing and Residential Areas, said on Thursday, February 6, 2025.
He, however, did not specify the nominal amount of the potential investment from the UAE.
He said further that collaboration with the UAE in the housing sector is part of the government’s effort to address the scarcity of affordable housing in Indonesia.
“The government guarantees supply first. This is what pak Prabowo did in all sectors, such as food and energy,” he cited.
He added that investors from the UAE are currently calculating the feasibility of the program as the return on investment set must keep the price of housing in the three million homes program affordable.
Meanwhile, the Public Housing Savings Management Agency (BP Tapera) cited that investment demand in the housing sector is still high, with the housing backlog at the end of 2024 recorded at 9.9 million units.
Earlier, Minister of Housing and Settlement Areas, Maruarar Sirait, said that the three million homes program has begun to attract the attention of foreign investors.
Several investors from major countries, such as China, UAE and Qatar, have shown their interest in the program. However, the potential investment is still in its early stages and is only in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
