Indonesia sovereign wealth fund INA targets AI in healthcare and renewables, data centres and the Indonesian sovereign wealth fund INA
Chief Investment Officer of the Indonesia Investment Authority, Mr. Agung, said that the fund's priority areas are digital infrastructure, healthcare, and renewables, as it seeks to support the economic development of the country and find foreign partners.
INA was launched in 2021, with $5 billion of capital provided by the government, and a dual mission to foster sustainable growth and generate returns. The initial focus was on direct equity investment to attract foreign co-investors.
The fund has added private credit and hybrid capital to its assets of 163.4 trillion rupiah (10 billion dollars) since then, in order to assist Indonesian companies with their overseas expansion and attract technical expertise and capital.
INA was Indonesia's first sovereign fund. It is now the smaller one, after the launch of Daya Anagata Nusantara Investment Management Agency in February, a broader, larger fund that received $20 billion of state assets.
In an interview conducted on the sidelines the SuperReturn Asia Conference in Singapore, Christopher Ganis, INA’s CIO said: "Of course, as our government thinks about data independence and data resiliency there will be a greater demand for these data centres."
He added: "Data centres, everything that supports the digital infrastructure and subsea cable, this will also be an exciting sector for us."
INA has formed partnerships, including with Singapore's multi-asset company Granite Asia. The two companies will jointly invest more than $1.2 billion in Indonesia's tech ecosystem. They have also backed projects like the DayOne campus data centre in Batam.
Ganis, the former U.S. BlackRock private credit investment manager in Southeast Asia who joined INA in 2024 said that artificial intelligence was a top priority and that INA will be focusing on practical applications.
He said: "AI is something that I am definitely interested in, but I do not want to be a herd lemming who just follows the crowd." "Maybe first we'll do an AI application in healthcare."
He added that renewables are still a priority, pointing out INA's investment in Pertamina Geothermal Energy with Masdar Clean Energy, based in Abu Dhabi. He said that the investment has been very successful for INA.
Ganis stated that Asia's dominant bank financing structure is what drives INA to support cross-border growth and explore non-bank alternatives.
When you expand internationally, your local bank in Jakarta will not be able to support this expansion. You have not yet informed your investment destination about who you are. Who knows you? "That's when we come in," said he.
Ganis stated that INA's top priority is Indonesian-linked investments.
He said, "Right away, there is a much higher priority at home." "I can't justify to the Indonesian people that I want to invest abroad (in a project), which has nothing to do Indonesia." $1 = 16,435.0000 Rupiah (Reporting and editing by Scott Murdoch, Lincoln Feast)
(source: Reuters)
