Indonesia President Joko Widodo is confident that more Chinese-backed loans and lower borrowing costs can help him reach a 7 percent growth target, rebuffing critics who doubt his ability to revive Southeast Asia’s biggest economy. The country is relying on investors and state-owned companies to fund 70 percent of its infrastructure needs, and wants a third of that from the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the president, known as Jokowi, said in an interview. The government is aiming for 5.3 percent economic growth this year, well short of the goal set by Jokowi upon taking office in 2014. “I still have four years to achieve that,” Jokowi told Bloomberg Television on Thursday after inspecting a toll road project on the island of Sumatra. “If infrastructure is going on, and industry, and manufacturing, and tourism is promoted well, then it will begin showing by the fourth and fifth year.” Jokowi, 54, has sought to win back investors who grew disillusioned with political squabbles and policy confusion after he swept to office on a mandate for change about 16 months ago. The former furniture maker revamped his cabinet in August and the new team moved to address investor complaints through a series of economic policies. The president has pledged to implement business-friendly reforms, increase spending on railwaysand ports, and to transform the country’s often corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy. The government will change the rules governing foreign investment limits in 49 sectors including in retail, fisheries and the digital economy, Jokowi said on Thursday.

Investment Rules

Foreign ownership would be increased in industries including toll roads, cold storage and cinemas, according to a government statement on Thursday. Restrictions were set in 19 others, including coral reef harvesting and small plantations. To some analysts, the policies don’t amount to much. “The slow drip-feed of each fiscal stimulus, regulatory and foreign investment reform has had the decibel level of a small pop,” Glenn Maguire, chief economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., said in a report after the investment announcement. “This continues to place the burden of macroeconomic stimulus on the central bank and further monetary policy easing in the near term is to be expected.” The government wants interest rates to fall toward the inflation rate, Jokowi said, while stressing that Bank Indonesia was “constitutionally independent.” The central bank cut its policy rate by 25 basis points in January to 7.25 percent, which compares with an inflation rate of 4.1 percent for last month. “The government can’t interfere,” Jokowi said in the interview, following comments last year by Vice President Jusuf Kalla calling for rate cuts. “But we want the BI rate to fall, fall, fall, fall, and keep falling so the real sector can compete with other countries.” Driven by an increase in government spending, the economy grew 5.04 percent in the final three months of 2015, surpassing all estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Gross domestic product expanded 4.79 percent in 2015, the slowest rate since 2009.

Slow Progress

Jokowi’s lofty infrastructure goals include more than 3,000 kilometers of railways lines, 24 ports and 2,000 kilometers of roads by 2019. He has attended ground breaking ceremonies for at least two high-profile projects only for work on them to stall, including a Chinese-led high speed railway. “I’m checking, checking and checking again,” Jokowi said after a meeting with contractors building the highway in Sumatra, part of a plan to build toll roads and railways across the country’s most populated islands. It was Jokowi’s fifth visit since the 140-kilometer project started. “Progress has been slower than we would have liked but the intent is clear,” Moazzam Malik, British ambassador to Indonesia, said at the launch of a business survey last week that showed confidence in the country declining. “Jokowi had a dose of reality over the last 16 months.”