The 12-month capital lock-up: can I actually use my PT PMA's IDR 2.5 billion?
Anonymous
I’m setting up a PT PMA and I’ll be putting in the IDR 2.5 billion paid-up capital. But I keep reading about a “12-month lock-up.” Does that mean my money is frozen for a year? I need to pay staff and rent an office almost immediately. What can I actually do with that capital, and what gets me in trouble?
1 reply
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Kevin Tan · Foreign Client Director · 21 June 2026
This is the most misunderstood rule of 2026, so it's worth being precise.
The lock-up does not freeze your business. It restricts withdrawing the paid-up capital itself — the IDR 2.5 billion — out of the company for 12 months as if it were free cash. It does not restrict spending that capital on running the company.
Allowed and, frankly, expected:
- Salaries and contractor payments
- Office rent and fit-out
- Equipment, software and subscriptions
- Marketing and professional fees
- Any genuine operating cost — documented and reflected in your quarterly LKPM
What actually triggers trouble:
- Transferring the capital back out to a shareholder or related party
- Lending it out or treating it as a dividend within the lock-up
- Leaving it idle for 12 months with no operational spend to show — silence reads as "shell company" to the system
So the compliance job is two-sided: record your real costs properly as realised investment, and make sure nothing looks like capital flight. The proof is the LKPM report every quarter — miss those, and the OSS system can move from a warning to a suspended NIB on its own, which then blocks KITAS renewals.
In short: yes, spend it — on the business, on the record. If you want this handled so a missed quarter never becomes a frozen company, that's exactly what our LKPM & capital lock-up retainer covers.