TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta:Some 20 members of the US-Indonesian Business Council (UIBN), including investors ExxonMobil Indonesia, Motorola, British Petroleum and New York Life Insurance, met with economic ministers at the Ministry of Finance in Jakarta today(12/2). Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Rokhmin Dahuri told the press today that the American businessmen were interested investing in Indonesia. According to Dahuri, UIBN is particularly interested in investing in four sectors: energy and power, telecommunications, transportation, and agriculture and fisheries. “The investment would specifically include Motorola’s energy supply on the use of vessel monitoring systems to facilitate monitoring illegal fishing boats,” he said. Dahuri said US investors will start investing this July. As for the agriculture sector, he added, US investors want to export their products to Indonesia. However, they would like the Indonesian government to reduce obstacles to investing in the country. “For instance, reducing taxes, making implementation of regional autonomy more pro-business and eliminating other problems,” Dahuri said. Other problems considered by those investors in their investment in Indonesia, Dahuri said, are lack transparency of Indonesian bureaucracy and regulations and numerous autonomy regulations that seem to be mixed up and overlapped. Despite the cheap price of Indonesian products, these investors also considered high taxes in Indonesia as a problem. Therefore, the investors plan to meet with House of Representatives (DPR) Commission V and IX and discuss this matter. Despite such problems, the US investors said that making a business in Indonesia is much cheaper than in other countries. Hence, Dahuri said, further talks will still be carried out by the investors and Coordinating Minister for the Economy. “Still, all their demands are not entirely true,” he added. Dahuri said that among the projects included in the investors’ interest, the investors have agreed to invest on Paiton electrical project. This project will be continued by using Motorola project that is good in their vessel monitoring system investment. Dahuri is yet to acknowledge exact numbers of the investment as this is only the first meeting that is yet to detail numbers. In the matter of law enforcement and regional autonomy, the government will coordinate with Attorney General and National Police in law enforcement efforts and suggest for improvement of Law number 22 of 1999 on Regional Autonomy through the Minister of Home Affairs.
