Lotte Shopping, Korea’s largest department store operator, plans to open four shopping malls in Indonesia by 2018 to tap growing consumer spending in a nation where half the population is younger than 30. PT Lotte Shopping Avenue Indonesia will build two in Jakarta in the next three years, with the others in the cou
Lotte Shopping, Korea's largest department store operator, plans to open four shopping malls in Indonesia by 2018 to tap growing consumer spending in a nation where half the population is younger than 30.
PT Lotte Shopping Avenue Indonesia will build two in Jakarta in the next three years, with the others in the country's second-biggest city, Surabaya, and in Medan on Sumatra island, President Director Suh Chang-suk said in an interview in the capital on June 6. And there is a lot more potential for malls in the world's fourth most populous country, Suh said.
A growing middle class is increasingly attracting retail and consumer manufacturing companies to Southeast Asia's largest economy, replacing natural resources as the key prospective industry for overseas money, Mahendra Siregar, Indonesia's investment chief, said in April. Ikea, the world's largest furniture retailer, plans to open a store this year.
“For the retail industry, it's great because the population of the young generation is big,” Suh said.
By 2020, the number of middle-class and affluent Indonesians may almost double to 141 million from 74 million in 2012, according to a 2013 report by Boston Consulting Group.
Household spending grew 5.6 percent in the first quarter, helping to offset slowing exports and investment that caused economic growth to weaken to its slowest rate in more than four years. Demand for imports is driving persistent trade and current-account deficits that weigh on the rupiah.
An April retail sales survey by the Bank Indonesia rose 27.8 percent from a year ago.