Indonesian firms doing business with China face tough times with coronavirus outbreak
- From freight forwarding companies to money changers, businesses relying on the Chinese market are feeling the pain as the country slowly gets back to work
- Indonesian exports and imports from its top trading partner China have halved since the first week of February
The reason? “China has halted its production” in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, said 24-year-old employee Erianti, who asked that her full name not be used.
Before the outbreak, in an average month Erianti’s company would have orders for as much as 300 million rupiah (US$21,000) worth of goods, “but it went down to about 150 to 200 million rupiah because most [orders] were from China”, she said.
To make matters worse, agents that used to handle shipments to Jakarta from the Chinese cities of Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hangzhou had not been doing so since the outbreak, Erianti said, while Chinese manufacturers are only just starting to work through a backlog of orders that stretches back to January. Virus cases have dwindled in China and officials are trying to cautiously restart operations in the world’s second-largest economy.
Amid the supply shortages, and concerns over the security of completed orders that are still stuck at airports and seaports in China, Erianti’s clients are now opting to import products from other countries, even though they are often more expensive.