Indonesia
Jakarta best place to buy property in Asia in 2013
ndonesia’s overpopulated capital is predicted to be Asia-Pacific’s top real estate market in 2013, edging out such established markets as Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney. This is according to a report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute.
Indonesia’s overpopulated capital is predicted to be Asia-Pacific’s top real estate market in 2013. Dubbed ‘Emerging Trends in Real Estate – Asia Pacific 2013’, the report says Indonesia’s economic turnaround driven by a strong domestic demand and resource-oriented economy has impressed (and lured) international investors.
According to the report, Indonesia’s interest and inflations rates are very much under control, while its GDP is growing at an impressive 6.5% annually. However, the country’s main economic driver is foreign direct investment, which is increasing at a much higher rate: 39% in the first half of this year.
Property services firm DTZ recently reported that office rents surged 29% year-on-year in Q3 2012, largely driven by demand from foreigners and locals alike.
Strong growth has helped Jakarta jump 10 places from its 2011 ranking. However, PricewaterhouseCoopers cautions that the city’s real estate is not entirely rosy. Difficulties in finding inexpensive bank loans, trustworthy local partners and land with disputed ownership all spell ‘buyers beware’.
Below is the report’s top 15 cities in the Asia-Pacific for real estate investment.
1. Jakarta, Indonesia
2. Shanghai, China
3. Singapore
4. Sydney, Australia
5. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
6. Bangkok, Thailand
7. Beijing, China
8. China’s second-tier cities, such as Chongqing, Tianjin, and Shenyang
9. Taipei, Taiwan
10. Melbourne, Australia
11. Hong Kong
12. Manila, Philippines
13. Tokyo, Japan
14. Seoul, South Korea
15. Guangzhou, China
Asean
The Indonesia-Singapore Bilateral Investment Treaty Comes into Effect
Through the upgraded DTAA, the tax rate on branch profits was reduced from 15 to 10 percent, and the tax rate on royalties for copyrighted works of literature, arts, and film, and eight percent for the use of industrial, scientific, or commercial equipment was lowered from 15 to 10 percent.
The latest Indonesia-Singapore Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) came into effect on March 9, 2021, and replaces the previous BIT, which was signed in June 2006 and expired in June 2016.
– The vehicle is widely used to help tech start-ups go public
– Both Singapore’s and Indonesia’s exchanges are set to allow SPACs
– Several South-east Asian tech unicorns may use SPACs to list publicly
South-east Asia is seeing a wave of interest in special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, with various major tech players considering them as a means to fast-track public listings. In parallel to this, several exchanges in the region are moving to allow SPAC listings, with a view to boosting post-coronavirus growth.
SPACs are shell companies set up by investors and then listed on a given stock exchange. Their sole function is to acquire a private company, enabling it to go public without having to go through a traditional initial public offering (IPO).
A SPAC does nothing beyond its essential function – it neither produces nor sells anything, and a SPAC’s only assets are the funds raised from its own IPO.
Crucially, people who buy into a SPAC do not know what its eventual acquisition target or targets will be. This is why SPACs are often referred to as “blank cheque companies”: they give the founders a free rein to back their choice of private company. A key feature of SPACs is that they are often headed by big-name business executives or fund managers, who trade on past successes to inspire trust in investors.
While they are far from a novel phenomenon, SPACs have become a hot button topic in recent times: SPAC initial offerings quadrupled last year, with the vehicles raising a record $80bn.
Merging with a SPAC enables a company to go public and raise capital more quickly and painlessly than with a traditional IPO, circumventing some of the volatility that Covid-19 unleashed on global markets. At the same time, they function rather like venture capital, helping investors to buy into high-growth start-ups on the ground floor.
Asean
Indonesia’s Omnibus Law: Positive Investment List and the Liberalization of Business Sectors
Examples of non-fiscal incentives are the provision of supporting infrastructure, simplified business licensing procedures, and the guaranteed energy supply or raw materials.
In the first of ASEAN Briefing’s Indonesia’s Omnibus Law series, we analyze Presidential Regulation 10 of 2021 (PR 10/2021) on business fields open to investment — also dubbed as the positive investment list. The regulation comes into effect on March 4, 2021.
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