Golden Vision 2045: Reaping the Gains from Trade

Indonesia has been pursuing a broad push towards greater trade openness with regional and global partners, seeking to leverage external demand to reach high-income status by 2045. This welcome and timely effort comes amid ongoing trade policy shocks. Our analysis suggests that deeper trade integration, focusing on reducing non-tariff barriers, along with complementary structural reforms, can generate significant GDP gains for Indonesia. These gains can come from unilateral actions on reducing non-tariff barriers affecting imports, which would be amplified by increasing market access in the context of trade agreements with major partners. Alongside trade policy, structural reforms in other areas—such as human capital and logistics—can further enhance trade integration. These reforms can reduce trade costs on their own, while also complement trade policy by helping Indonesia to broaden comparative advantage across sectors. Such an ambitious trade liberalization and structural reform program could make Indonesia ‘open for business’ amid shifting global supply chains; the resulting GVC-integration, supported by FDI, could drive gains beyond this paper’s estimates.