Jakarta, 30 November 2020: The American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia (AmCham) and the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) hosted an event to launch the results of the survey ‘The Impact of COVID-19 on Foreign Firms in ASEAN’.
AmCham and ERIA created a rapid survey in April 2020 to understand the evolving needs of US companies in Indonesia. Five months later, the two institutions joined forces again to implement a similar survey providing a more in-depth investigation of how foreign companies in ASEAN have been responding to COVID-19 and what plans they have moving forward.
Twenty-four chambers and business organizations representing foreign companies were involved in the implementation of this survey. 264 firms with operations in ASEAN responded to 26 questions about the impact of COVID-19 on their business operations.
Key findings of the survey include:
The event was opened by Mr Lin Neumann, the Managing Director of AmCham Indonesia. After welcoming the panellists and participants, he thanked ERIA for the strong collaboration. He also thanked the 24 businesses organizations and chambers representing many nationalities who helped to distribute the survey to their members.
In his Opening Remarks, Mr Koji Hachiyama, the COO of ERIA, thanked everyone who helped implement the survey and said ‘This survey will serve as the voice of businesses across ASEAN regarding the impact of the pandemic on their operations and how they plan to manage operations and investment now and into the near future.’
After showing a short video that summarized the results, Ms Lydia Ruddy, Director of Communications for ERIA who lead the survey, presented some of the results in more detail. This was followed by a panel discussion with Mr Sunit Dhoka, Country Representative, Cargill Indonesia; Ms Siobhan Das, CEO, American Malaysian Chamber of Commerce; and Mr Dionisius Narjoko, Senior Economist, ERIA.