By: Vishal Hiranandani
Indonesia’s trade performance is showing considerable resilience. Between January and May 2026, the Southeast Asian country’s overall goods trade balance was positive at $4.03 billion. This was driven by a strong non-oil and gas surplus of $16.31 billion, which offset a $12.28 billion oil and gas deficit.
That performance is indicative of a reliable economic foundation, and its priority now is to ensure that trade finance infrastructure keeps pace with the scale and regional importance of its trade economy.
Healthy trade flows, however, are only part of the equation, and capital is able to move more efficiently when transactions can be confidently verified. As Indonesia looks to deepen international trade – including through the Indonesia GCC FTA negotiations earlier this year – a key goal is to expand market access for its goods and services into the Gulf and, more broadly, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.
At home, Indonesia is also widening access to MSME finance through measures such as a new regulation from its Financial Services Authority (OJK), which is aimed at making financing easier to access, alongside the government’s updated KUR programme, which is a subsidised credit scheme for small businesses. As trade and financing expand, trusted digital infrastructure can become an important competitive advantage.
Strengthening the link between trade and finance
Every trade transaction creates a chain of documents: sales contracts, commercial invoices, bills of lading, customs declarations, insurance certificates, financing applications, and payment records. These documents often move across different institutions, systems, and jurisdictions.
In practice, each party may only see part of the transaction. A customs declaration may live in one system, invoice data in another, shipment records with logistics providers, and financing information with banks. Bringing greater alignment across these data points can improve confidence across the entire trade finance ecosystem. This fragmentation of trade data is the starting point for understanding where the risk lies.
Progress is already underway across different parts of Indonesia’s trade ecosystem. The Indonesia National Single Window provides a central gateway for customs, licensing, and other cross-agency trade requirements. The National Logistics Ecosystem, meanwhile, connects government agencies, ports, logistics providers, and private operators to improve the flow of goods and documents across the supply chain.
CEISA 4.0 (Customs-Excise Information System and Automation), the web-based platform launched in 2024 by the Directorate General of Customs and Excise (DGCE), allows businesses to submit customs declarations and supporting documents electronically. Beginning earlier this month, exporters are also required to upload supporting documents for export declarations – including invoices, packing lists, and transport documents – through CEISA 4.0.
Together, these systems are creating a richer digital trail across trade. The next opportunity lies in making that data more interoperable and useful for financing decisions, while still preserving privacy and institutional control.
Digital public infrastructure for trade finance
Having now created a source of abundant data, the major missing piece for Indonesia is now a trusted layer that connects that data to the financing decisions it should inform.
A similar disconnect between available data and actionable knowledge can also be seen in the broader context of under-invoicing and transaction misreporting. Here, the gap that exists between what is declared, shipped, financed, and paid for highlights a considerable infrastructure opportunity: better reconciliation of trade data across the institutions and systems that handle it.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has spoken about alleged under-invoicing and undervaluation of commodity exports, with Prabowo estimating cumulative losses of up to US$908 billion. The case illustrates the risk created when trade data – including customs declarations, invoices, shipping records, and financing applications – cannot be cross-verified across systems.
Rather than replacing existing banking or government systems, a trusted verification layer integrates with them to provide pre-disbursement checks on trade documents. Before funds are released, the system returns a real-time signal indicating whether a document has already been pledged elsewhere or shows signs of fabrication. The checks cover document authenticity, prior financing claims against the same asset, and consistency across the invoice, customs, and shipping record, flagging any cases that warrant closer review without requiring institutions to share sensitive commercial information or change how they manage customer data.
The output is a real-time confirmation that the document is authentic, has not already been pledged elsewhere, and is consistent across invoice, customs, and shipping records. For Indonesian exporters, particularly SMEs, that means lenders can make faster, better-informed decisions based on verified facts.
Why interoperability matters
As ASEAN’s largest digital economy, Indonesia is already central to regional trade flows. The conclusion of the ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA) negotiations makes Indonesia’s infrastructure readiness particularly significant right now.
The agreement focuses on paperless trade, cross-border data flows, digital payments, and interoperability between national systems. This creates a regional framework in which any country’s domestic verification infrastructure will directly determine how fully it can participate in and benefit from what DEFA makes possible. Indonesia is well placed to help shape those standards, and the quality of its domestic trade finance infrastructure will be central to how it does so.
At the transaction level, a bill of lading issued in Indonesia can be verified efficiently by a financier in Singapore, Tokyo, or Dubai, and a financing application submitted to a Jakarta bank can be checked against trusted registries to confirm the same trade asset has not already been pledged elsewhere. For Indonesian exporters, these traits can help determine how quickly financing is approved, how accurately risk is priced, and how confidently they can compete in regional and global markets.
Turning confidence into capital
The trade finance gap, ADB’s oft-cited estimate of unmet trade finance demand, is frequently described as a capital problem. In Indonesia, however, as in many other emerging markets, it could be more aptly described as a confidence problem. Far too often, the liquidity is available; what lenders need before deploying said liquidity is access to reliable transaction data. That is what verification infrastructure provides.
Indonesian small and mid-sized exporters stand to benefit most from the move toward verified transaction data. Many have genuine, viable trade flows, but face barriers in accessing finance because lenders cannot confidently verify their transactions. The result is that creditworthy businesses are treated with the same caution as higher-risk ones, simply because the data to distinguish them is not available.
Verification infrastructure can change that. When lenders can see a transaction clearly – with invoices, shipping records, customs references, and financing history all visible – they can verify the existence of the underlying trade, check it has not already been pledged elsewhere, and confidently assess the borrower’s transaction history. That is what makes faster, more accurate decisions possible, and how access to working capital can be improved.
This is where Indonesia’s strong trade performance base creates a financial opportunity. The country’s export activity creates the underlying value; trusted verification creates the conditions for that value to be financed efficiently, at scale, and with the kind of lender assurance that attracts both domestic and international capital.
The path forward
Indonesia enters the regional digital trade era with real momentum behind it. Its trade fundamentals are well established, digital infrastructure is expanding, and policy direction is clearly oriented toward trade and logistics integration. ASEAN’s digital economy agenda reinforces the case for action by creating a regional framework in which trusted, interoperable systems will matter even more.
The priority now is connecting existing foundations into a trade finance infrastructure that works across platforms and jurisdictions without requiring any single institution to cede control of its data.
Such infrastructure would give domestic and international lenders greater confidence in the transactions they are asked to finance. It would also deepen the foundations for SME access to working capital. But time is of the essence. In trade finance, delayed decisions often mean missed shipment windows, broken supply chain relationships, and lost business. Faster verification, therefore, is directly tied to commercial outcomes for Indonesian exporters.
Indonesia’s trade performance reflects the depth of its real economy. The next step is to ensure that the financing infrastructure around that economy is built to match it. With trusted digital verification, Indonesia can build a trade ecosystem where exporters access capital more readily, lenders operate with greater confidence, and the country’s role in ASEAN’s digital trade future is reinforced by the quality of its domestic infrastructure.
