Jakarta-elected Governor Anis Baswedan (R) and Lieutenant-Governor-elect Sandiaga Uno (L) shake hands during a press conference in Jakarta, April 19, 2017.
Adek Berry | AFP | Getty Images
When Sandiaga Uno was named Indonesia’s tourism and creative economy minister, the timing couldn’t have been worse.
It was December 2020, and the Covid-19 pandemic prevented people from visiting the country for months.
“I’m the tourism minister and the number of tourists is zero,” Uno told CNBC’s Christine Tan at an event in Singapore last month.
According to government data, Indonesia had about 16 million overseas tourists in 2019, with that number dropping to 1.6 million by 2021. In 2022, the number of arrivals will increase to 5.5 million.
“I said (we) better not have a department. We had zero tourists, but then I realized that millions of people lost their jobs … We’re really in a very, very difficult time,” Uno said.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo told Uno: “‘You know what to do,'” Uno recalled. “I had no idea what I was going to do, but I was thinking about what was really important to people.”
It’s not the first time Uno — a millionaire entrepreneur and businessman before becoming a politician — has had a difficult career. Finding himself out of work after the Asian financial crisis in 1997, he founded investment firm Saratoga Capital, initially to help companies on the verge of bankruptcy. Given the experience, a role in the tourism industry during the COVID-19 crisis may be fate, Uno said.
“Maybe that’s my fate, because when I started my business, I focused on companies that needed to be restructured, companies that needed to be raised, basically companies that needed to be revived,” he said.
“(Tourism) is home to 45 million Indonesians and nearly 5 million Indonesians have lost their jobs,” he said.
Entrepreneurial mentality
“You need to have an entrepreneurial mindset because you’re starting from scratch,” Uno told the ministry, adding that the team had learned some hard lessons while rebuilding the industry.
“When the number of (tourists) dropped to zero, we forgot about the domestic economy. Our target was foreign tourists. But we have a population of 280 million people, and this year, our target is 1.4 billion tourists. Domestic tourists,” Uno told CNBC.
As well as promoting tourism, Uno’s remit also includes helping the country’s creative industries such as food, fashion and craft industries grow digitally. With 23 million Indonesians working in the industry, the digital economy will be worth $140 billion this year, up from $70 billion in 2019, Uno said.
Given that there are more than 17,000 islands in the region, digital connectivity is not evenly distributed. “We need to raise $50 billion over the next few years … to focus on our digital infrastructure,” Uno said. “You have beautiful destinations, you have fantastic opportunities for SMEs, but (if) you can’t connect, then it goes to waste,” he added.
Uno began his career in banking in 1990, earned an MBA from George Washington University in 1992, and joined oil and gas company NTI Resources in 1995. In 2013, he and business partner Edwin Soeryadjaya took the investment arm of Saratoga Capital public after running the unit for about 15 years. Raised $150 million.Later that year, Forbes named Uno the richest man in indonesiawith a net worth of $460 million.
“The listing was a success, and I am very grateful. Some government leaders asked me to consider joining a political party (but I) continued to refuse,” Uno said.
But in 2015, Prabowo Subianto, now Indonesia’s defense minister, approached him. “He said: ‘You have made it, you have become rich and prosperous because of Indonesia. Now is the time for you to give back to the country.’ That’s what I did,” said Uno.
multi-million dollar campaign
He joined the right-wing Gerakan party Gerindra and became Jakarta’s deputy governor in 2017. He resigned in 2018 to become Subianto’s presidential running mate, a campaign that Uno said cost the party nearly $100 million over the course of a year, some of which he financed himself.
“Campaigning in Indonesian regions is very, very difficult and expensive because of the logistics from one place to another,” Uno said. The country is the largest archipelagic country in the world.
Subianto lost the election to Widodo, and Uno held no post until Widodo appointed him to his current post in 2020.
In April, Uno announced his intention to join the Indonesian Joint Development Party (PPP), joining the party in June. “I’m ready to fight for the people,” he said, saying improving the economy and increasing people’s incomes were the party’s priorities ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Does Uno hope to become president one day? “You should raise this issue with the Indonesian people,” he said.