What does Indonesian law require your construction contract to contain?

A contractor’s draft usually arrives as a short file in English: scope, price, a payment schedule, a signature block. Indonesian law does not treat that document as a private arrangement between two parties. It sets a floor for what a construction contract must contain, and it names the language that governs when the two sides stop agreeing.

Article 47(1) of Law No. 2 of 2017 on Construction Services requires a construction contract to describe at minimum 16 matters, lettered a to p.^{Source: 1}Lembaran Negara Republik Indonesia, Last reviewed 08/09/2026Confidence: Verified We read the statute in the copy published by the Jakarta provincial roads agency, as that file stood on 8 September 2026.

Three of those items we can quote you verbatim, because they are the three a foreign client most often finds missing. Item (a) is the parties. Item (b) is the formulation of the works, and the article spells out what that means: a clear and detailed description of the scope of work, the contract value, unit prices, lump sums, and the time limits for performance. Item (p) is the choice of construction dispute resolution.

The rest of the list we are not going to paraphrase from memory. It sits in the same article of the linked file, and a contractor who says the draft is complete can be asked to point at each item in turn.

Which language version wins?

That last sentence is the one to sit with. The English text you read and negotiated is not the operative text. Where the two drift apart, and in a document drafted by the contractor’s own office they drift in one direction, the Indonesian wording is what a forum will read.

What else the statute writes into the contract for you

Where the planned service life of the works is more than 10 years, Article 65 makes the contractor answerable for building failure for a maximum of 10 years from the final handover of the works, and requires that period to be stated in the construction contract.^{Source: 1}Lembaran Negara Republik Indonesia, Last reviewed 08/09/2026Confidence: Verified A contract silent on the point is not a contract with a longer liability. It is a contract missing something the statute says belongs in it.

The 2023 omnibus law reached into this statute, so the wording above was checked rather than assumed. Article 52 of Law No. 6 of 2023 amends 33 articles of Law 2/2017, and Articles 47, 48, 50 and 65 are not among them.^{Source: 2}JDIH Kementerian Keuangan, Last reviewed 08/09/2026Confidence: Verified Everything above therefore stands in its original wording, as read on 8 September 2026.

Where this answer stops

It stops at the word contract. Law 2/2017 governs a Kontrak Kerja Konstruksi, a construction works contract. A turnkey deal papered as the purchase of a finished building, or as a lease with a construction obligation attached to it, may not be a Kontrak Kerja Konstruksi at all. Article 47 then does not apply to it, and that is a more exposed position rather than a simpler one.

Two further limits, both ours. We read the statute and not its implementing regulation, so nothing here describes the detail that PP 22/2020, as amended by PP 14/2021, adds to these articles. And we say nothing about whether your contractor is licensed to sign at all: the articles on qualification and business licensing are among the 33 the omnibus law rewrote, and our reading does not carry across to them.