If you have a little capital, you can make money in Indonesia. even though basically many of the people are very poor here. Here are a few suggestions for you. We are always available to answer any questions or to act as your agent here.
1. There is a shortage of beef in Indonesia. Thus breeding cattle can be very lucrative. One way would be to have a farm but the start up expenses would be high. A hectare of land here costs around $30,000, then you would have to do some construction. There is a better was which has zero operating expenses. The system is to place a couple of calves with various families. They will gather the food from the countryside and take good care of the animals for say a year. At that time, the bulls are sold and the keeper is paid about $100 per animal. There are several breeds of bulls here. The common Indonesian variety which are low priced and easy to sell: the Brahma, which is used for ploughing etc and the large Limousin which is the most expensive. One of these calves costs about $500 and sells for over $1,000 when mature.
2. As you wander through town here, you will notice that one particlar type of shop always appears to be busy. This is a shop that sells gold. You may wonder how, in a poor country, people can afford to buy gold? The thing is that only half the customers seen in the shop are buying. The other half are selling! The people here use the shops as a kind of bank. When they have money, they buy gold and when they are short, they sell it back to the store. Thus the gold stores make a profit coming and going! The bad news is that, starting a gold store here with the present gold prices would be extremely expensive.
3. Farming can make money here. The workers, like the bull carers, don't get paid until the crop is sold. The main crops in our area are corn and rice for which there is a ready market. Peppers, tomatoes, squash are also cultivated. Once again, one would have to purchase land initially.
4. Inter-city buses are usually rented out to the driver for about $100 a day. That's over $30,000 a year. An older, used bus could be purchased for about $10,000 but would need a lot of servicing. A new bus would cost around $50,000 so the first couple of years would not show a profit. Instead of renting the bus, one could just employ a driver and helper but they would not have as much motivation as the renters would.
5. There are many fantastic products manufactured here in Indonesia including furniture, arts and crafts, shoes etc. Many items sell for ten times the cost in the West. The only problem is the shipping. It would not be feasible to ship single items, so this business requires the importation of a complete container full.
6. Houses are very cheap to construct here and they are all made of bricks, not wood.You can build a small house for about $7,000 and a luxury one for $25,000. In spite of the low cost, most buyers finance their houses, usually for fifteen years. The banks here charge about 20% per year. If you had capital or could obtain it from a Western bank at a low interest rate, you could make money on building the houses and also on the financing.
