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Indonesia nearly has a monopoly on nickel. What next?
Prabowo Subianto, the new President, wants to create an electric car supply chain.
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Boxes of nickel-based battery cells at a manufacturing plant in Indonesia. As the country's market share of nickel has multiplied, so too has the grandeur of its politicians’ ambitions.
PHOTO: AFP
The Economist
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In 1996, Mr Tommy Suharto, the youngest son of Indonesia’s dictator, set out to build the Timor, a national car. The plan was to import models manufactured by Kia Motors, a South Korean carmaker, and rebrand them. Kia would teach Indonesians car-making; strict local-content requirements would ensure the economy benefited.
But as a financial crisis in 1997 battered Indonesia’s car market, 15,000 Timors sat idle in a carpark. By 1998, as riots in Java brought down the Suharto regime, embarrassed Indonesians who owned the national car tore off their “T” logos. Under pressure from furious trade partners, the Timor was withdrawn.
