Don’t wait for an ‘investor’s heaven’: Timor-Leste’s Ramos-Horta tells foreign firms to be adventurous as its economy opens up

[DILI] Years ago, watching a Chinese travelling salesman in Timor-Leste pedal up a steep hill on a bicycle saddled with plastic containers, Jose Ramos-Horta thought to himself: give the man a year and he surely would have set up his own shop; five years, and it would have expanded.

To foreign investors watching from the sidelines and wondering whether the time is right to set up shop in Asia’s youngest nation, the Timor-Leste president has one response: be adventurous and take risks.

“Why the Chinese are all over the world is not only because China is big and has billions of dollars to invest – but because they are not waiting for perfection for them to go to a country,” he said during an interview with The Business Times at the Presidential Palace in the Timorese capital of Dili.