JAKARTA : Apple Inc.’s proposal to invest US$100 million in Indonesia hasn’t met"fairness” principles, a top government official said, signaling Jakarta is seeking further neogtiations before lifting a ban on domestic iPhone 16 sales.
For instance, Apple has funneled more than 244 trillion rupiah toward manufacturing facilities in Vietnam, where its market sales total just roughly 1.5 million units, the official said. In comparison, Apple has only invested about 1.5 trillion rupiah in developer academies in Indonesia, where it sells some 2.5 million units.
The Cupertino, California-based company’s 1.5 trillion rupiah investment in the country falls short of the 1.7 trillion rupiah it pledged in 2023 - a discrepancy of about $10 million"which is so small,” the minister said on Monday. In an attempt to lift the sales ban, Apple made an upsized $100-million investment offer, Bloomberg News reported this month.
Last year, Indonesia announced regulations forcing ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok to split its shopping feature from the popular video-scrolling service, a bid to shield its retail sector from cheap Chinese-made goods.