Law 7/2011 and PBI 17/3/2015: paying for Bali property in rupiah

Bali villas are marketed in dollars. The Currency Law and the Bank Indonesia regulation under it decide what currency you pay in, what currency the price may be stated in, and what a dollar contract is worth.

Law 7/2011 and PBI 17/3/PBI/2015, the articles a property buyer meets

Bali property is marketed in dollars and paid for in Indonesia. Two instruments decide what that means: the Currency Law, and the Bank Indonesia regulation that implements it. The law is still the 2011 text on this point — the 2023 financial-sector law amended articles 2, 11, 14A and 19 — not article 21 (Law 4/2023 art. 10) — and the Bank Indonesia regulation is in force according to the JDIH BPK status record for PBI 17/3/PBI/2015, checked 2 October 2026.

Payment: rupiah, and a written agreement does not change it

Article 21(1) is the rule: rupiah must be used in every transaction with a payment purpose, every other monetary obligation and every other financial transaction in Indonesia (Law 7/2011 art. 21(1)). Article 21(2) lists five exceptions — state-budget transactions, grants from or to abroad, international trade, foreign-currency bank deposits and international financing. A villa bought in Bali from an Indonesian seller is none of them. The Bank Indonesia regulation applies the rule to cash and non-cash transactions alike (PBI 17/3/PBI/2015 art. 3(1)), so a bank transfer is covered as much as cash.

The clause most often stretched is article 23(2). Article 23(1) says a person may not refuse rupiah offered as payment, unless its authenticity is in doubt (Law 7/2011 art. 23(1)); 23(2) excepts foreign-currency payment agreed in writing. That is an exception to the refusal rule, not to the obligation in article 21. And the Bank Indonesia regulation closes the gap: written foreign-currency agreements are allowed only for the exempted transactions, or for a strategic infrastructure project approved by Bank Indonesia (PBI 17/3/PBI/2015 art. 10(3)). A sale and purchase agreement signed in dollars does not turn a domestic sale into an exempted transaction.

What it costs to get wrong

For non-cash payments — which is how property is paid for — the sanctions are a written warning, a payment of 1% of the transaction value capped at IDR 1 billion, and/or exclusion from payment traffic (PBI 17/3/PBI/2015 art. 18). Cash breaches, and refusing rupiah, fall under the criminal provision of Law 7/2011 art. 33 (PBI 17/3/PBI/2015 art. 17), which makes non-use a criminal offense (Law 7/2011 art. 33(1)). We do not print the article 33 penalties: they were written for the old criminal code, the 2023 code restructures penalties in other laws, and we have not mapped how.

The price on the listing

This site used to say that the Currency Law governs payment and says nothing about how a price is advertised. That is true of the law. It is not true of the regulation under it. Article 11 of PBI 17/3/PBI/2015 requires business actors to state the price of goods and services only in rupiah (PBI 17/3/PBI/2015 art. 11). The sanction is a written warning (PBI 17/3/PBI/2015 art. 19).

So a developer or an agency listing a villa in dollars only is stating a price in a way the regulation does not allow. The sanction is mild, which is presumably why the practice survives; the point for a buyer is different. A dollar figure is not the price you will pay. The contract has to name rupiah, and the question is who carries the exchange rate between the day you agree and each day you pay. Fix the rupiah amount, or the rate and the date it is read, in the agreement itself. Reading a Bali listing.

We read article 11 as reaching business actors — developers, agencies, operators. A private individual selling their own home is not obviously one, and we do not say the rule reaches them.

Contracts already running in dollars

The non-cash obligation started on 1 July 2015 (PBI 17/3/PBI/2015 art. 23). Written foreign-currency agreements made before that date remain valid until they expire, but any extension or amendment must comply (PBI 17/3/PBI/2015 art. 21). That matters for old leases. A 25-year lease signed in dollars in 2012 can run its term, but extending it is an amendment, and the extension has to be in rupiah. Leasehold explained.

When you sell and take the money home

The obligation is about transactions in Indonesia. Converting the rupiah you receive and sending it abroad is a separate step through a bank, and foreign-currency deposits at a bank are one of the exemptions in article 21(2). The sale itself is still in rupiah, and so are the taxes on it. The taxes on a sale.

This is commentary, not legal advice. The Bank Indonesia regulation is implemented by circulars we have not read; a notary handling your purchase will know how they are applied.

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