Investors from Taiwan have shown an interest in investing $2.5 billion dollars in Indonesia’s petrochemical industry to manufacture ammonia and mega methanol. Ammonia and mega methanol can produce many derivative products, such as consumer textiles, industrial textiles, engineering plastic, resin, rubber and acrylic fiber.

Investors are expecting to build two factories, each on an area covering 100 hectares of land, in two phases. In the first phase, 6,00,000 tons of ammonia would be produced per year and 1.8 million tons of mega-methanol in the second phase.

The Taiwanese investors are yet to finalise a suitable location for their projects, taking into account the availability of natural gas as the raw material for petrochemical plants. The proposed investment is expected to help meet this year's investment realisation target, which is $45.2 billion, while the target for foreign investment realisation has been set at $29.3 billion, which is 65 per cent of the total investment target.

The Indonesian petrochemical industry has been encountering a rapid rise in its dependency on imported polymers. Indonesia is becoming increasingly attractive as an investment destination for petrochemical producers, particularly from Taiwan and Japan. There are huge opportunities for investment due to the high and growing domestic demand.