South Korean, Chinese cinema giants line up to enter Indonesian market

The government’s recent decision to allow full foreign ownership in local movie businesses has attracted the interest of South Korean and Chinese cinema giants to invest in Southeast Asia’s largest market, a government official said.

Creative Economy Agency (Bekraf) head Triawan Munaf said a number of foreign investors were currently conducting feasibility studies for expanding their operations in Indonesia, home to more than 250 million people. Among the big names on the list are South Korean’s Lotte Cinema and Megabox, as well as China’s Dalian Wanda, which is also the world’s largest cinema chain operator.

“Hopefully they can come by the middle of 2017,” he said on Thursday on the sidelines of the DBS Asian Insights Conference 2016 in Jakarta.

Despite being the largest economy in Southeast Asia, Indonesia has one of the least penetrated cinema markets in the world. Data gathered from various commercial cinemas shows that there are only about 1,100 film screens available in the whole of Indonesia, with 35 percent of all theaters being in Jakarta.

With its population size, Indonesia, Triawan said, ideally should have 15,000 screens.

BKPM estimates that the recent removal of certain sectors from the nation’s negative investment list, signed by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo earlier this year, will help efforts to hit the investment target of Rp 594.8 trillion (US$43.6 billion) by the end of this year.

Under new regulations, foreign investors can now fully own local cinemas, film production houses and distribution firms.