Indonesia to ease foreign hiring by startups faced with talent shortage

Labor reforms tackle lack of engineers compared with Malaysia and Thailand

Job seekers in Jakarta: The government aims to ease rules on foreign hiring by startups, which have struggled to find local tech talent. © Reuters

SHOTARO TANI and ISMI DAMAYANTI, Nikkei staff writers

February 14, 2020 01:26 JST

JAKARTA -- Indonesia is proposing to make it easier for startups to hire foreign talent, lending a hand from the government to a sector that it sees as essential to economic development, but one that has struggled with a lack of domestic talent.

The change is part of sweeping reforms that President Joko Widodo has put forward in a draft omnibus law on job creation, which packages a number of legal revisions into a single vote.