On 13 August 2025, the Indonesian Business Council (IBC) convened a roundtable on “Strengthening Workforce Diplomacy: Indonesia’s Strategic SSW Expansion to Japan”, spotlighting opportunities in Japan’s plan to absorb 820,000 foreign workers by 2029 under the Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) scheme. Currently, Indonesia contributes only 12%, well behind Vietnam’s 59%.
An IBC Institute study projected that increasing Indonesian migrant worker (PMI) placements by 30%, with a shift toward medium-skilled roles, could reduce national unemployment by 0.28 percentage points and generate up to Rp440 trillion in foreign exchange.
In a concrete step, IBC and the Ministry of Migrant Worker Protection, represented by Abdul Kadir Karding, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen governance, training, certification, financing, and worker protection abroad.
CEO Sofyan Djalil emphasized that this initiative is not only about numbers, but about positioning Indonesia as a global supplier of high-quality talent in the future labor market.
