Paid-Up vs Investment: The Rp 10bn Myth

There is a number tattooed on the Bali expat brain: ten billion rupiah. Repeat it in any co-working space and heads nod. "You need 10 billion to open a PT PMA." It is the single most-quoted figure in foreign company setup — and it is quoted so loosely that it has hardened into a myth that misleads more than it informs.

The number is not invented. But what it actually is, and what you actually have to put in the bank, are two very different things — and the gap between them is where most budgeting goes wrong.

Two numbers people fuse into one

The confusion comes from collapsing two separate concepts:

• Investment plan (nilai investasi). This is the total planned investment for your PT PMA per business field per project location — land, building, equipment, working capital, the lot. The headline "above ten billion" figure that floats around the foreign-investment regime refers to this total investment plan, and it has long excluded land and buildings from the threshold calculation. It is a planning commitment, not a single deposit.
• Paid-up / issued capital (modal disetor). This is the share capital actually placed into the company. It is a much smaller, separately-regulated number, and it is the one that touches your bank account on day one.

When someone says "you need 10 billion," they are usually gesturing at the investment plan, then unconsciously implying you must deposit it. You generally do not deposit the full investment figure as cash on incorporation. Conflating the two is how a workable plan gets talked out of existence over coffee.

It is per-code and per-location, not one flat wall

The more important correction is that there is no longer a single, universal number that applies to every foreigner equally. Under the evolving investment rules — the framework refreshed by Permeninves 5/2025 and its predecessors — the threshold and the structuring expectations vary by KBLI activity and by project location. A capital-light services activity and a capital-heavy hospitality build are not held to the same yardstick, and the same activity can carry different expectations in different regencies.

That is why this article gives you ranges and a method, not a magic figure:

• A service / software activity such as 62199 (other computer programming) has a fundamentally lighter physical footprint — its investment plan is built from people, tooling, and working capital, not land and machinery.
• A bricks-and-mortar hospitality activity such as 55204 (apart-hotel) carries a far heavier investment plan, dominated by property and fit-out — but, crucially, the land-and-building portion has historically sat outside the threshold calculation, which changes the math again.

The right figure for your company is a function of your code, your scale, and your location — exactly the kind of value that moves with regulation and must be checked live, not memorised from a slogan.

And none of it helps if the code is blocked in Bali

Here is the trap that catches the well-capitalised. People assume the threshold is the only gate: clear the capital bar and you're in. In Bali since 13 May 2026, that is false. The risk-class moratorium (Governor letter B.27.000/642/PM/DPMPTSP) blocks low and medium-low-risk codes for PMA regardless of how much money you bring. You can be ready to invest far above any threshold and still be refused — not for too little capital, but for the wrong code. Capital answers "can I afford it?"; risk class answers "am I allowed?" — and in Bali the second question now comes first.

How to budget honestly

1. Fix the code first. Confirm it is a live 2025 KBLI and that it is registrable for a PMA in Bali (risk-class check), before costing anything.
2. Separate the two numbers. Build your investment plan (total, often excluding land/building) and your paid-up capital (the cash deposit) as distinct lines — never one fused figure.
3. Price it per code and location. Treat the threshold as a range driven by your activity and regency, refreshed against the current Permeninves framework, not a flat ten-billion stamp.
4. Leave room for it to move. These thresholds evolve; build the plan so a regulatory update is an adjustment, not a demolition.

The "Rp 10bn myth" isn't wrong so much as lazy. The real answer is more forgiving for some businesses and stricter for others — and it is never the reason a Bali registration fails when the code itself is the thing that's blocked.

Map your exact code to its registrability and its current investment expectations on the Bali Zero KBLI Navigator at balizero.com — so you budget against the real, per-code numbers instead of a coffee-shop slogan.