Capital Formation and Capital Stock in Indonesia, 1950-2008

Abstract

This article presents long-term estimates of gross fixed capital formation, disaggregated by category of productive assets, for the period 1951-2008. These data, combined with approximations of probable average asset lives and a plausible asset retirement procedure, are used in a perpetual inventory method framework to estimate gross fixed capital stock in Indonesia for the years 1950-2008, disaggregated by productive asset category. Total capital stock grew significantly from the late 1960s, at about 10% per year, until the 1997-98 economic crisis. The high capital-output ratio in 1997 suggests that a significant part of Indonesia's rapid economic growth during the 1990s was due to capital accumulation.