Bareksa.com - Both candidates in Indonesia’s disputed presidential election are pledging to spend big on roads, ports and railways, a move that would ease retailers’ struggle to reach customers in remote parts of the island nation. While consumer companies in the world’s fourth most-populous country trailed builders as the benchmark stock index rose 18 percent this year, the Indonesia Food & Beverage

In Jakarta Globe, Producers Association says sales would be as much as 50 percent higher with improved access to rural areas.

“We see consumer companies in Indonesia as another way of playing the infrastructure cycle indirectly,” Mark Gordon- James, a senior investment manager at Aberdeen Asset Management, which oversees about $541 billion, said in an interview in Singapore on July 10. “Any pro-infrastructure policy will in turn make the economy more competitive and those benefits will trickle down to the consumer.”

Indonesia, where the economy is projected to grow 5.7 percent a year through 2016, will gain about 80 million new consumers in the next 15 years, says Kantar Worldpanel, a London-based research firm.