11 Facts on Indonesia in the Global Economy

1. On October 20, 2014, Joko Widodo — commonly known as Jokowi — was inaugurated as the seventh president of Indonesia.

2. Jokowi is the first president not to come from Indonesia’s political and military elites. As a result, ordinary Indonesians have pinned their hopes for economic betterment on him.

3. Jokowi is taking office a year after Indonesia moved ahead of the United Kingdom to become the world’s ninth-largest economy.

4. Indonesia’s GDP in 2013 was $2.39 trillion, just slightly higher than the United Kingdom’s $2.32 trillion.

5. Covering 1.9 million sq. kms of land rich in timber, minerals, oil and other resources, Indonesia is about eight times larger than the UK.

6. Indonesia’s population — which at 248 million makes it the world’s fourth most-populous country — is more than four times larger than the UK’s.

7. This also means that Indonesia’s per capita GDP (at $9,635) is still only about a quarter of the UK’s ($36,200).

8. Indonesia was a Dutch colony from the early 1600s until World War II.

9. Present-day Indonesia is nearly 50 times larger than its former colonizer, the Netherlands, and has about 15 times the number of people.

10. Indonesia’s $2.39 trillion economy is nearly three times larger than the economy of the Netherlands ($840 billion).

11. However, taking population into account, the Netherlands’ per capita GDP ($46,440.04) is almost five times higher than Indonesia’s.

Note on data: All GDP figures are expressed in terms of purchasing power parity, which takes into account the differences in the prices of goods and services between countries.

All data are available in the IMF’s World Economic Outlook database (October 2014 edition).