Widodo is trying to close a budget gap, shore up foreign reserves, and replace the hole left in the economy by falling commodity prices. On the plus side, stable debt and a fast growth rate means Indonesia’s debt-to-GDP ratio has fallen by half in the past 15 years, to around 30 percent.
Another plus is the Asian Development Bank (ADB) sees inflation dropping 1.5 percentage points next year, to 4.0 percent, thanks to falling oil prices. That is expected to lead to a series of central bank interest rate cuts, which should help to offset current economic headwinds.
Near-term headwinds aside, the Indonesian economy is expected to see economic growth accelerate to 6.0 percent next year, according to the ADB. And that can be chalked up to demographics.
The number of people living in poverty has fallen from 18 percent in 2006 to around 11 percent today, and many of those people are joining the middle class. For a country with 250 million people, that creates a powerful backdrop.
Bhatt at Glovista Investments believes the country has a strong chance to develop a robust consumer economy.
Morningstar’s Patricia Oey says domestic consumption now accounts for two-thirds of Indonesia’s gross domestic product, which dispels the notion the country is primarily a commodities producer. The ETFs that focus on Indonesia appear well-suited to capture any further gains in domestic consumption.
The iShares MSCI Indonesia ETF is based on a cap-weighted index that is heavily skewed towards the financial sector (40 percent), consumer discretionary and staple stocks (30 percent), and telecom services (11 percent).
Over time, the Indonesian stock market—and the ETFs that follow it—should become more broad-based, thanks to reforms and privatizations. “Smaller enterprise and non-national domestic industry often follow after the nationalized institutions are deregulated or become more open to competition,” says Yadava from iShares.
The iShares fund, which carries a 0.62 percent expense ratio, has lost roughly five percent of its value annually over the past three years, reflective of the country’s economic growing pains. Bhatt says that the underperformance means that “valuations have become attractive again.”
Investors may also want to consider the Market Vectors Indonesia Index ETF (IDX), which sports a slightly lower 0.58 percent expense ratio. This fund has a similar sector weighting as the iShares fund, though the Market Vectors fund deploys a set of rules that slightly limits large-cap exposure. The typical holding is roughly 10 percent smaller.