Infrastructure Financing in Indonesia
Infrastructure Financing in Indonesia
FINANCIAL SECTOR
INDONESIA
Abstract
Ministry of National Development Planning (Bappenas) stated that in order to achieve high
economic growth in the medium term, Indonesia is expected to increase investment, especially
from private sector. This paper aims to explore the challenges and issues in increasing private
investment via financial sector. This paper found that challenges and issues especially lies in the
availability of long term investment to mobilize to infrastructure project. Therefore it argues that
Indonesia needs to develop a comprehensive strategy to match the supply and demand of long
term funds, including what instrument will best mobilize the long term funds to infrastructure.
Institutional Investors and State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) will play a strategic role in
conducting this process. The paper also develops argument of why an innovation is needed on
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Background
Despite the sizeable number of studies that reported less attractive results, over the last 25
years, most economic studies have found positive link between public infrastructure and
economy. Research has shown that a well-designed infrastructure will have long-term economic
benefit. It can raise economic growth, productivity, land values, as well as significant positive
spillovers.
Aschauer (1989), investigated whether all government expenditures are productive using
production function in which output depended on public capital, private capital and employment.
His result showed that the elasticity of output with respect to public capital was between 0.34
and 0.39.
especially after 1997 crisis where Chinese Government pushed out a stimulus plan to maintain
post-crisis economic growth. From 1997, infrastructure investment amount in China has grown
significantly, which is more than 6 folds. Infrastructure is seen to remain as key driver to China’s
economy as the growth in the beginning of 2016 still record positive number at 19.6 percent.
Under the new government administration starting 2014, Indonesia has shared similar
direction as China back in the days. To sustain the economic growth, Indonesia is shifting its
to increase productivity and reduce cost. In order to deliver this, Government has committed to
increase infrastructure investment. To finance this investment, Government has promoted better
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quality of state budget spending. However, aside of Government fiscal policy commitment, it has
been identified that support from the private sector is also important.
Literature Review
financing, the literatures stated that there are two broad categories of it, which are project and
corporate finance (Inderst, 2013). Infrastructure carries a unique characteristics which makes it
suitable to project finance. Based on Irwin (1997), this is due to several factors. First,
infrastructure services are very essential for customers and it is often being provided by
monopolists. These has made infrastructure projects becomes very sensitive to regulatory risk
especially on price as customer demands to keep prices low. Indeed, the World Bank (1994)
estimated that user fees fell far short of costs in gas, electricity, and water.
Second, infrastructure projects need huge investment in the beginning with a possibility
of ten to ten years recoup. Under such circumstance, serious risks needs to be borne by parties
involved in the development. For investor, risks are typically in the form of whether Government
or SOE as project owners will honor the pre-agreed tariff regulation and payments to investors
(Klein and Roger, 1994). Once investors are willing to inject investment, it is maybe a moral
hazard for Government or project owner to lower the prices that has been agreed before.
Considering these risks, investors are typically being very conservative toward infrastructure
investment. Without adequate contractual protection and declaration of risk sharing mechanism
(Dasgupta and Sengupta 1993, Edlin and Reischelstein 1996) among others, it is going to be very
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The common channel of funds to infrastructure via financial sector is through financial
percent of equity, both in listed (private equity or indirect equity investment) and unlisted (direct
equity investment) equities, and 60 to 80 percent of debt. The debt could be a combination of
traditional grants such as commercial bank loans, corporate bonds issuance, bridge and backup
facilities, multilateral and export credit agency loans, or more innovative ones that appeared just
in recent years such as asset-backed securities, project bonds, infrastructure indices, Exchange-
Inderst (2013) argued that categorization as reference for which instruments to use are
based on (i) project stages (greenfield, brownfield, primary, secondary), (ii) geographic (global,
regional, emerging markets, country), (iii) revenue source (or ultimate ‘funding’): user (e.g. toll
road) or availability-based (i.e. government and tax payers, e.g. PPP hospital), and (iv)
As discussed above, financial sector plays a critical role in providing and mobilizing
financing for infrastructure investment. Some studies such as Mavrotas and Son (2006) showed
that the relationship between financial sector and economic growth is stronger in developing
countries. This indicated that financial sector development will be key for addressing Indonesia’s
King and Levine (2003) constructed four indicators of financial development to measure
the services provided by financial intermediaries: (i) the ratio of liquid liabilities to gross
domestic product (GDP), which measures financial depth, which is defined as the overall size of
the formal financial intermediary system; (ii) the ratio of commercial bank domestic credit to the
sum of commercial bank domestic credit and the central bank domestic credit, which measures
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the relative importance of specific financial institutions; (iii) the ratio of credit issued to
nonfinancial private firms to total credit; and (iv) the ratio of credit issued to nonfinancial private
Above indicators are good in determining how accessible and accommodative financial
sector is for the business sectors. However, these indicators is not enough. As mentioned earlier,
infrastructure sectors in particular is very unique due to its long-term feature. Therefore,
specification on what the financial sector has to provide is needed. On that matter, a study by
OECD (2013) can be highlighted. It argued that beside financial institutions, capital market and
institutional investors are also important source of long term finance such as infrastructure
finance.
For long time already, banks have been a dominant player in the financial system to
facilitate savings transformation into investment. However, there has been growing awareness
that institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, and, most
recently, sovereign wealth funds, are also an important source of funds (OECD, 2013). Due to
mismatch in the banking sector between supply of funds available which is short term, and
demand of funds which is long term, the non-bank financial institutions (NBFI) are now cited as
alternative source of financing. As this is a new model, a challenge for the literatures therefore, is
to explore how to mobilize this long term investment particularly to finance infrastructure. This
Beside the source of funds, Chan, et al. (2009) argued that capital market discipline (as
infrastructure for the investment mobilization) should be introduced to better enable the
infrastructure investment environment. Capital markets should discipline lenders and borrowers
by providing ‘signals’ to motivate and reward the sustainable use of capital funds (Lane 1993).
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According to studies by Bishop, Damrau and Miller (1989) and Lane (1993), a number of
conditions are essential for capital markets to be fully effective to promote a growing
infrastructure market, namely that (i) free and open financial markets exist to enable flexibility in
interest rates for accommodating variable risk profiles of investments, (ii) market participants
have access to reliable information for evaluating the creditworthiness of borrowers and their
projects, (iii) governments minimize capital controls and do not support privileged access to
finance, (iv) governments avoid creating ‘moral hazard’ by bailing out financially delinquent
borrowers and troubled projects, even in event of an impending or actual default. Empirical
evidence on capital-market performance indicated that many of the above conditions for market-
based investment discipline have been fulfilled in advanced economies but a little problematic in
others (Balassone, Franco and Giordano 2004; Lane 1993; Pisauro 2001).
investment. Literature has been so focal about how to increase investor’s participation in
infrastructure projects investment from the Government side. First, Irwin (1997) articulated that
there has been an array of support provided by Government to promote the private investment
such as preferential tax treatments, grants, equity or debt contributions (without expecting
commercial returns), and guarantees for a particular risk. These obligations are articulated in the
form of laws, decrees, statutes, licenses, contracts and other legally binding document1.
In regard with non-financial support, one may relate to the importance of policy reform
which is a second thing that Irwin (1997) proposed. To completely support the nation’s interest
1
There was a trend of formulating bilateral investment treaties that defines investor’s right (Irwin, 1997)
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management, adequate tariff regime, track record of honoring commitment, and accountable
policy making. This will gradually enable the environment for infrastructure financing.
Corporate equity is a major source of private finance for infrastructure (Inderst, 2013).
Infrastructure stocks2 form a subset of global stock markets. RREEF (2011b) find 535
infrastructure stocks with a market capitalization of USD 3.25tn worldwide. This is roughly 6%
of the estimated global stock market capitalization in 2011, a percentage similar to the one found
by S&P (2007).
However, OECD (2013) assessment result showed that over the last decade, there has
been major shifts in investment strategies. In particular, there has been a marked decline in
allocation to listed equities, while investment in debt securities as well as alternative assets
classes has increased substantially. This highlighted that there is a room for infrastructure sector
to attract the institutional investors through designing a tailored investment vehicle. With the
emergence of the infrastructure investment theme in the mid-2000s, for example, many index
From the supply side of the capital, institutional investment in infrastructure has become
a much discussed topic in recent years, also in terms of public policy. Governments and other
institutions call for a heavier engagement of pension funds, insurance companies etc. in
infrastructure projects, and ‘long term investing’ more generally (European Commission 2013a).
2
The dispute is on about how far the term ‘infrastructure’ can be stretched. The ‘core’ infrastructure includes
diversified and integrated companies while ‘broad’ goes as far as power generation, shipping and timber.
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Infrastructure investments potentially offer some useful characteristics for pension funds
and insurance companies that have to match long-term, annuity-type liabilities. They include
long-term, predictable income streams, low correlations to other asset classes, relatively
favourable default and recovery rates of project finance (compared to corporate debt). The main
preference of most institutional investors is for lower risk, operating infrastructure assets with
predictable, often inflation-linked, cash flows (‘coupon clipping’). Some pension funds,
especially very large and well-funded ones, are also able to take on construction risks, or should
In 2015, out of 20 selected big pension funds from all around the world including
Australia, Canada, and Chile, the portfolio allocation for infrastructure investment both in the
form of debt as well as listed or unlisted equities has a mean of 8% from total investment.
From the literature review and global trend analysis above, there are still gaps that is felt
so that Indonesia could not easily apply as presented by literatures and becomes our important
study questions, which is what kind of comprehensive strategy or reform should be implemented
The current strategies are heavily relying on financial type of support. Using the
background of huge infrastructure needs and the role of state budget that is limited, such study
and analytical tool is needed by the Government of Indonesia. Furthermore, although there is
vast literature on infrastructure financing, there is still a room to improve the literature by adding
more country specific case like Indonesia because one case could not fit to all.
The strategies discussed should cover the area (i) how to better utilize financing
instruments option for infrastructure?, (ii) the use of these infrastructure financing instruments in
Indonesia given its current capital market development, and (iii) how to kick-start the
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infrastructure market development. The paper will have a specific session for exploring policy
implication for Government of Indonesia. This part will summarize how policies should respond
Based on the research questions above, the paper will conduct both case studies and
contextual approach which is started with (I) Identification of Infrastructure Financing Gap in
Indonesia, (II) Analysis of Long Term Investment Market in Indonesia as Tool for Infrastructure
Financing: Current Condition and Challenges to Improve, (III) Strategy to Improve Infrastructure
Financing is usually the last thing to be sorted out. However, in the current economic
development agenda in Indonesia, there lies a potential financing gap for infrastructure
development that can be detected early in the stage of infrastructure development planning.
Looking at the overall investment needs for the economy, the 2015-2019 National Medium Term
Development Plan (RPJMN) projected that Indonesia will need IDR26.558 trillion investment.
There is a gap between this target (see Table 2) with the historical data. For example, in order to
finance this investment, stock issuance is expected to grow from 12,0 percent average in 2010-
2014 to 24,6 percent in the next five years. The other increase is expected to come from bank
loan and bonds issuance. Bank loan and bond issuance is expected to grow from 12,0 percent and
23,3 percent each in 2010-2014 term to 24,6 percent for both in the next five years.
As the number is high, there is a question mark on whether we can achieve the
investment target given many external and internal challenges. For infrastructure investment,
challenges is more likely about how to attract private investment that accounts for 36,5 percent
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of the RPJMN infrastructure needs and therefore resulted in annual needs of IDR402,8 trillion
(or equal to USD31 billion). With the currently small share of infrastructure in Indonesia’s
financial sector, it is clear that the infrastructure financing from private sector gap is big. As of
August 2016, this infrastructure investment realization was only less than one percent. Hence it
is very urgent to boost the capacity of our financial market to finance larger economic
development needs.
Financing
After calculating potential gap, now we look closer on the potential availability of funds
for infrastructure funds and challenges to mobilize it. This is done by assessing current Indonesia
As can be seen in below Figure 2 below, Indonesia economic financing still heavily relies
on banking sector. If we take a closer look to the maturity profile of banking sector’s asset and
liabilities, it is clear that banks liabilities are mostly in 3-month time deposit therefore if we keep
using the current arrangement, Indonesia economy will still suffer from a maturity mismatch. On
the other hand, our corporate bond market is still dominated by short term bonds, whose maturity
There are reasons why we should change the current arrangement, the strongest one is the
consequence of Basel III implementation on banking’s lending portfolio. Under the new capital
requirement in Basel III, deleveraging was made necessary by the liquidity ratios introduced by
Basel III and by the difficulties of banks to raise long-term senior unsecured funding.
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Even without the change in global regulation, although banks remain the largest
contributors for the infrastructure debts market, the lending to infrastructure is actually small. No
Precise data are available, however, PT SMI’s assessment to 4 Indonesian biggest banks comes
up with the fact that their infrastructure lending represents 8 to 10 percent of total bank lending
portfolio. The shares focus primarily on the Electricity (power) and Toll Road sector.
While the global trend encourage corporate to raise funds via capital market, our
domestic financial market in general is not ready. Ratio of broad money (M2) to GDP Indonesia
is only around 40 percent. This means there is a low usage of financial market to pool funds in
Indonesia. Another interesting indication from this fact is that it does not link with the quite high
savings ratio in Indonesia. Even though it has not achieved its potential, given the financial
inclusion rate is still relatively low in Indonesia, the latter fact actually means that our savings
forms of savings in Indonesia is cash, gold, and term deposits. The first two forms are very
unproductive as it does not go through the financial intermediation system at all, while the latter
is still contributing to the economic development. This reason lies behind why the high savings is
not reflected in M2 to GDP or the depth of our financial market. This is a significant impediment
for infrastructure financing though financial market, both through bonds or equity market.
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result, the only financial products that is potential to be used as infrastructure financing scheme,
only few are ready in term of liquidity. In corporate bond market, infrastructure exposure is also
about less than 20 percent (most of corporate bonds are in finance sector). Even more limited
exposure has been made to non-traditional instruments such as project bonds. In absence of
project bond and limited availability of supply of corporate bond issued by infrastructure
companies, it is challenging that exposure to the infrastructure sector shall increase dramatically.
Besides, the lack of financial products availability as options for investors is also due to
the natural sequence of the market development. Based on Karacadag, Sundararajan and Elliot
(2003), the financial market should be developed in such sequence so potential negative
The sequence starts from (1) money market; (2) treasury bill and foreign exchange
market (3) government bond market; (4) corporate bond and equity market; and (5) asset backed
securities and derivatives market. Right now, Indonesia only has government bond and equity
The rest of the product should be built simultaneously starting from money market,
treasury and foreign exchange market, in order to be used as infrastructure financing scheme. By
immediately starting the development, some critically important products for infrastructure
financing such as local currency corporate bond (including infrastructure project bond), asset-
backed securities, Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), with improvement of market
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Compared to other countries in the region, like Malaysia and Singapore, Indonesia’s
saving rate is relatively adequate. However, with the same level. Add the fact that the savings are
of mostly short-term nature like bank deposits, the solution needs to be aimed to address both the
Figure 3 below shows the level of savings in Indonesia compared to other countries.
Figure 4, 5, and 6 shows that long-term savings like pension funds or insurance products are
much lower than short-term savings like bank deposits. As a result, long-term financing in the
market is not very well fulfilled which is reflected on the relatively low outstanding bonds to
60 200
Indonesia
Malaysia
40 Singapore
100
20 Malaysia
Indonesia
0 Singapore 0
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011
80 50
60 Singapore
Malaysia
40 Indonesia Indonesia
Malaysia
20 Singapore
0 0
2002 2006 2010 2002 2005 2008 2011
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150
100
Indones
50
ia
0
2000 2003 2006 2009 2012 2015
Source: AsianBondsOnline
As explained before, the economic needs currently is long term financing which
concentrate mainly on infrastructure financing. This fact shows that our economy is facing a big
challenge because having long term infrastructure project also means strong base for domestic
Using qualitative research method and learning from international experience, this paper
is therefore expected to discuss in more detail regarding designing an optimal scheme to fill the
infrastructure financing gap in Indonesia through private investment. More discussions will also
productive sectors. It is also expected to take into account the potential capital offshore to be
INDONESIA
While savings rate is not much different with other countries, the utilization of this
As of March 2016, domestic institutional investors have IDR915 trillion asset under
focus primarily on publicly listed instruments such as Government bonds, corporate bonds and
listed equities. Credit risk knowledge within these institutional investors rely heavily to
As a result, limited exposure has been made to the customized direct financing,
meanwhile infrastructure financing are typically done using this form. In absence of project bond
and limited availability of supply of corporate bond issued by infrastructure companies, and the
challenging to boost the development of the infrastructure financing using institutional investors.
It can be seen from Figure 8 below that the possible direct channeling of institutional
investor’s asset to infrastructure financing is through bonds and stock. Insurance sector for
example has allocated 35 percent of their asset to bonds, while BPJS and pension fund has
While bonds portfolio is already big, stock portfolio has ample room to increase. In the
rest of the world, the assets are mostly allocated in bonds and shares at the second place. In
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Japan, for example, institutional investors (pension funds, insurance companies) are the top
Source: PT SMI
Despite the challenges, there is still room for adjustment to the more ideal concept of
approximately 10% of assets allocated in term deposit into infrastructure or corporate bonds
based on our estimated assets in 2020. The breakdown of challenge for each institutional
Beside the current arrangement, the policy direction is also in line with the purpose to
increase institutional investor participation on long term financing. As can be seen in Table 6
below, our three biggest institutional investors has been obliged to support long-term financing
of the country by holding a minimum percentage of capital market products such as bonds and
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channeling to corporate bonds, because the current regulatory framework is still addressing lack
participation at the government securities. For example, BPJS, under the newly issued Financial
Services Authority (OJK) regulation, they are required to allocate 50 percent of their asset to
Taking into account all the factors, necessary initiatives needs to be established to secure
our financing needs for infrastructure financing, especially by establishing alternatives source of
financing. This should be firstly done by analyzing the cross country experience.
Governance Improvement
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For Indonesia’s institutional investors to move to that direction, there are challenges to be
faced, such as how to credibly conduct the investment. This may involve some key investment
process to follow certain good governance process, including the establishment of proper
functioning key investment considerations that leaves some necessary discretion for the
(EPF) Malaysia is done. All the investment including infrastructure will have to comply key
committee review is there to make sure due diligence and monitoring of investment performance.
Although BPJS Manpower for example already has these features, the functioning needs to be
improved.
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Role of SOE
In Indonesia case, even though the institutional investor participation is already active in
the bond market, infrastructure sector itself is still underserved. This is reflected on Figure 10
below. The issuance of bonds is still dominated by the financial sector (61.9 percent). The
(19,4 percent). In term of Issuance, During 2015, the issuance of infrastructure sector bonds
amounting to IDR 12,5 trillion. While in term of capital market, the market capitalization of
Infrastructure sector traded in Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) is only 13.2 percent of the total
market capitalization. Many large infrastructure company has not listed in IDX, such as PT
Figure 10: Infrastructure Weight in the Corporate Bond (as of Jan 2016)
The potential to issue, however, is very huge. SOEs balance sheet are still under leverage
with debt level representing less that 40 percent of total assets (See Table 7) While the ideal level
of leverage for SOE does not really come to a fixed number, a common rule of corporate optimal
level of leverage of their balance sheet, 50 percent, can be used as reference. In the past five
years to 2015, limited debt fund raising has been taking places in the SOEs engage in the
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Airport, Railway, Land Transport, Seaport, Waste treatment and Sewerage. Most of the capital
expenditures were: (1) internally sourced, and/ or (2) being element of public contribution.
However, issuing project or corporate bonds in Rupiah does not create immediate
positive effect for the corporates or SOEs in particular. First reason maybe because some
corporates lives in a “dollar world” (for example commodity-based corporates) where getting
funding through foreign loan or issuing global bonds is kind of a form of natural hedging. The
cost of fund of those two options are also very low compared to issuing Rupiah bonds. In the
longer term, as the liquidity starts to load the market, the cost of fund for Rupiah bonds will be
lower. For some SOEs whose revenues are in Rupiah for example Electricity, Roads, IDR bonds
into several categories based on the stage of the project which determines risk borne by investors
(see Image 8 below). While commercial operation is easier to get funding, financing for green
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field (planning or construction) stage remains challenging thus needs higher attention from the
GOI.
In particular with infrastructure financing, it is important to note that there is a wide range
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Asset Securitization
Karacadag, Sundararajan and Elliot (2003) argued that the financial market should be
developed in a sequence. The sequence starts from (1) money market; (2) treasury bill and
foreign exchange market (3) government bond market; (4) corporate bond and equity market;
and (5) Asset Backed Securities (ABS) and derivatives market. However, the paper argues that
corporate bond market is not pre-requisite for ABS to grow and help infrastructure financing.
Asset Securitization has been an important vehicle for corporates. It has been commonly
used for the purpose of housing finance. However for infrastructure financing, implementation
has not yet as plentiful. As explained earlier, investors in Indonesia do have appetite for
sophisticated and volatile instrument like equity, and therefore, the next possible instrument to be
Basic concept of securitization is making a illiquid asset to become liquid. For the
context of infrastructure financing, securitization of asset can therefore be used by recycling the
monetary value of existing infrastructure to finance green field (new) infrastructure projects.
Such scheme has been implemented by other countries such as Australia and Mexico.
Asset securitization basically has similar form with equity and bonds. The main
difference between the two is that equity and bonds are issued by a company so the return of the
instrument depends on the company performance, while Asset Backed Securities (ABS) as a
product of asset securitization are issued by a Collective Investment Contract (CIC) as an issuer
For this reason, SOE that wants to raise funds via asset securitization must first carefully
identify the potential asset (Schwarcz, 1994). These assets normally represents rights to payment
at future dates and are usually referred to as “receivable”. SOE that owns this receivable is called
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the “originator”. Risk that these payments may not be fulfilled is a very important factor in
valuing the receivable. After identifying the assets, originator SOE will transfer this receivable to
a legally separate entity. This transfer is made in order to separate receivables from risks
associated with the originator3. In term of infrastructure ABS, the asset can be in the form of
Figure 11 below showed basic structure of ABS. Particular SOE that needs financing to
contact the originator / creditor to sell financial asset (for example future receivable) to CIC. The
CIC will deal with servicer (the one who collects cash on behalf of investors), custodian bank,
investment manager, investors or lenders both directly and through arranger/underwriter, rating
Based on the structure, there are some risks embedded in ABS instrument:
2. liquidity risk from the event when investor could not sell holdings in the abs secondary
market;
3. prepayment risk from the event when financial asset occurs faster than projected
(reinvestment risk);
4. operational risk from the implementation of investment manager, the custodian bank, and
and also several advantages that other financing vehicle does not have, such as (i)
transparency: claim on investment is directed toward the underlying asset, (ii) good credit rating,
(iii) tough selection criteria, (iv) secure transaction structure, (v) payment of amortization, (vi)
3
There are two specific features in consequence of this transfer, which is true sale and bankruptcy remoteness.
Both has accounting and legal treatment.
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low default rate because there is diversification of asset, (vii) bankruptcy remoteness (the
bankruptcy of the debtor would not affect the payment from asset), (viii) relatively higher
coupon at the moment, (ix) stable valuation, and (x) reputable performance.
ABS is divided into several categories based on (i) yield and seniority (fix and non-fix
cash ABS), (ii) offering method (general and limited offering), and (iii) payment of principal and
In Indonesia, the securitization of assets has a huge potential that has not been fully
utilized so the market mechanism (price discovery), regulation, and infrastructure are considered
not yet developed. ABS has been issued since 2009 all of which is based on mortgage. The size
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The lack of participation makes it challenging for other investors to join. As can be seen
in Table 14 for the mortgage case, the participation of NBFI investor is very small, therefore a
kick-start from SOEs and government prioritized economic infrastructure projects under tax
amnesty regime could be a significant catalyst for the development of ABS market in Indonesia.
There are regulations related to investment in ABS, for example requirement for ABS
credit rating and whether public offering can be obtained. The regulations are different for banks
and non-banks. For banks the regulation is Bank Indonesia regulation 7/4/PBI/2005, for
Finance regulation 199/PMK.010/2008, and for mutual fund is Ministry of Finance regulation
No. IV.B.1, while other institutions such as PT Taspen (pension fund for civil servants) and
As of 2015, ABS total issuance has reached IDR 5,4 trillion only. In the middle of risks
faced by investor about assessing the risk of a new project (green field project), securitization of
asset is filling a gap by allowing more fund flows under the base of an existing project (brown
field project) or assets. Beside safer than other tailored-to-infrastructure instruments, ABS is also
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not affecting the balance sheet of the company that is related to the asset, for example PT PLN
(power) with electricity base tariff rate as the underlying asset. Using this scheme, leverage
capacity of SOEs could be increased without giving up prudent risk sharing mechanism between
ABS could help covering financing needs for green field projects. For that, there are two
main options. First is SOE monetizing cash flows on existing brown field infrastructure (toll-
road; power plant; airport slots) and use the income from the ABS to finance greenfield project
Practically, the SOE issues ABS on the future cash flow and sells the ABS to an
institutional investor (pension fund, insurance company), possibly with credit enhancement from
the government if the rating on the ABS is not adequate for the institutional investor. With the
income from the sale of ABS, the SOE can self-finance green field infrastructure investment
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without requiring a bank loan or issuing bonds. Eventually, after a few years as the projects is
starting to generate cash flow (become brown field), it will be able to use the cash flow from this
This option is the easiest one as it does not require banks. But it assumes that there is
already a sizeable quantity of brown field projects to be used for ABS. If there is not enough of
The second option for green field project financing is bank bridging loans. When SOEs
want to finance green field infrastructure, they borrow from the banks for the project for a
maturity of up to 5 years. A government guarantee may be needed for the bank loan given the
construction risk. After two or three years of operations, the project has a steady stream of cash
flow (becomes brown field). The SOE issues ABS on the cash flow of the infrastructure and sells
the ABS to institutional investors (pension fund or insurance company). A government guarantee
on the ABS may be needed if the rating is not enough for the institutional investor. With the
income from the sale of ABS, the SOE pays back the bank for the original 5 year borrowing.
This option needs the participation of the banking system to provide bridge loan during the green
field period of the project. But it does not require existing brown field project to be securitised.
On the second option, the securitisation process can also be initiated by the bank itself,
and not by the SOE. Once the construction part of the green field project is over, the bank may
want to move the loan off its balance-sheet by securitising it, and selling the securities to an
institutional investor such as a pension fund or an insurance company. Of course, the securities
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Option 2
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From the list of potential ABS above (Table 16), PT PLN (Power) asset is the most
feasible one to be securitized in the near term. Besides, PT PLN has already exhausted its ability
to generate more debt securities out of their balance sheet. Therefore, issuing bonds will not
anymore becoming a main option in term of raising debt-type funds. While on the other hand, PT
Let alone the size of the asset itself that is big, this is due to the fact that PT PLN’s asset
has specific features that can be accommodated by the current law as well as regulation. These
features among others is predictability of the future cash flow as the amount of the asset is
always growing and not dependent to service usage and the fact that the bills are now managed
in a specific account separated from PT PLN’s account. Further support on the underwriting will
As for asset securitization of toll revenue and concession of PT Jasa Marga in the short
term cannot be implemented because of the issue of the clarity of legal and accounting treatment
for such transaction4. Basically because of its high predictability, OJK considered that enough
4
Asset Securitization process follows a feature called “true sale” which basically a sale (to the special purpose
vehicle or SPV) that is sufficient under bankruptcy law to remove the receivables from the originator’s bankruptcy
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toll revenue potential for securitized been recorded as intangible assets in the amount of
approximately IDR22 trillion in the balance sheets of PT Jasa Marga. Issues to be discussed is
how to structure concession right (asset) is such that the switch to the CIC-ABS will only be toll
revenue collection rights to the consumer. Meanwhile, toll road operations related rights remains
In order to facilitate other kinds of asset, there are challenges in the medium term, such as
investment strategy is buy and hold to maturity), (ii) relatively long tenure for retail investors,
(iii) complicated and hard to understand structure due to unfamiliarity compared to other
instruments that has been used by SOE such as bank credit and bonds, (iv) accounting treatment
for investor, (v) limited available information about ABS, (vi) limited number of ABS
outstanding, and (vii) the absence of proper regulation in the law level, there is no securitization
act that specifically regulate about asset securitization in Indonesia –such thing is important for
consumer protection especially. Therefore, in the beginning, set of fiscal support may be needed.
Policy Implication
Based on strategies above, this paper would like to summarize the implication to our
policies to accommodate the goals. This implication is this paper’s summary of main
recommendation for Government of Indonesia to kick start the acceleration of the infrastructure
estate. Due to the absence of law addressing specifically the asset securitization for infrastructure and lack of
experience in conducting the transaction, it is a little uncomfortable for SOE to use such scheme.
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Policy implication is divided into three areas of strategy, which are (i) Increasing Role of
Institutional Investor, (ii) Increasing Role of SOE, and (iii) Kick-starting the Development of
In order to increase role of institutional investors, first we should aim to increase the size
of asset of the institutions. It can be done gradually through increasing rate of mandatory
contribution and limiting early withdrawal of old age savings. This may include the needs to
Beside increasing the size, the allocation policy needs to be improved also so that
allocation to productive investment such as infrastructure could increase. This involves the needs
to have minimum allocation policy in the beginning. This is a form of “forcing” education for
institutional investors. Recently, OJK has accommodated this idea by revising OJK Regulation
No. 1 2016 about Government Bond Investment for Non-Banks Financial Institutions. The
revision mandated for example life insurance companies to allocate minimum of 20 percent of
discipline. This can be done by utilizing the role of investment panel. The main direction for
shaping this critical panel’s role is for example to avoid too heavily bonding target.
Beside governance, fiscal support could also play role to increase investor’s appetite.
This idea has already been accommodated for pension fund industry through the exemption of
this fund for capital gain tax of debt securities transaction as explicated in Government
Next is for SOE, especially infrastructure SOE to explore more diversified way of
financing, by issuing more marketable securities for example. As explained earlier in the paper,
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weight of infrastructure can be improved in the domestic bond market. A start on the fiscal
support actually has been placed through Government Regulation No. 77 2013 about the Income
Lastly, as the infrastructure market is very tiny, Government could then catalyze the
market by promoting a real scheme so more transactions could happen in the future. One of the
scheme is PT PLN (power)’s future cash flow securitization to build new infrastructure. As
identified above, PT PLN’s electricity receivable in this case is the most workable one for
Infrastructure CIC-ABS. Therefore, it should be promoted. Government could help initiating the
idea through coordination in the national level between relevant ministries, SOEs, asset
management companies, and so on. Government could also provide credit enhancement
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(guarantee) just like the recent progress on Government guaranteeing toll project in Sumatra that
Most importantly, it is the Government’s role to make sure that regulatory aspect is
accommodating such scheme. This is related with the regulation for ABS issued by OJK
(formerly Indonesia Capital Market Supervisory Agency/Bapepam LK) No. IX.K.I about
VI. Conclusion
From above, we learnt that infrastructure investment needs to be well designed to have
large economic benefit. A strategy has to be put to fulfill the needs to attract investment from the
private sector. Building good PPP system, infrastructure banks, debottlenecking, optimum risk
sharing, and incentives provision are very necessary to enable the environment for it.
About instrument, bond remains very important due to maturity mismatch in the current
financial sector which is dominated by banks whose liabilities is less than a year. With the
current low depth of both market and institutions, strategy to deepen the market through
sequencing the development, institution through increasing asset of NBFI, skills, as well as
sectors are essentials. With the shift on global regulation which makes it not a favorable position
for banks to deliver long term projects, urgency of bond market development should be top
priority. However, we also learnt that the size and liquidity of bond market should not be a
We learnt also that beside the financial market depth, access of financing also needs
attention. With the high savings rate in Indonesia, financial market should be built in the same
speed. Therefore, getting the financing to the right uses and users is important.
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Things the Government can do to support the financial sector development is by enabling
environment, such as regulatory neutrality. Building up the asset of NBFI as the natural fund
supplier for a long term economic financing needs is very important. However, at some point,
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