President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo is visiting North Sulawesi province to inspect progress of major infrastructure projects in the fast growing tourism area, including the Manado-Bitung (39 KM) toll road. Jokowi has reaffirmed his commitment to continue developing the country’s infrastructure in his second term in office (2019-2024). 

Ministry of public works and housing will soon open public tender for the long-delayed Jakarta Sewerage System after securing Rp4.03 trillion of 25-year loan from Japan. This is one of big infrastructure projects in the country. The project will be started with Zone 1 and Zone 6, which require total investment of Rp16.8 trillion or around US$1.2 billion.

Over the weekend, we attended activities of Habitat for Humanities in East Java. The organization, with support from Saratoga Group owner Edwin Soeryadjaya, arranged the so-called CEO Build, wherein CEO of some major companies participated in physical construction of homes for low income group in Gresik regency. HSBC CEO Sumit Dutta was among the CEOs.

Electricity is no longer an issue; road infrastructure improved significantly; water supply also increased substantially. More reliable basic infrastructure should be strong foundation to boost investments going forward. Determination, however, is needed in overhauling legal and bureucracy system. 

Minister of industry Airlangga Hartarto has on Thursday (Jun 20) kicked off development of the Karawang New Industrial City (KNIC) in Karawang, West Java province with estimated investment of US$300 million. At the same time, six companies started construction of their respective factory for food processing, pharmaceutical, packaging, and precision tools with combined investment of US$100 million. 

China, the world’s single largest steel producer, has set a target to reduce domestic capacity to less than one billion tons per annum by 2025. One billion tons = more than 50 times of Indonesia’s production capacity. Hebei province, one of the largest producing area, meanwhile, aimed at keeping annual capacity within 200 million tons. Provincial government then encouraged steel producers to expand overseas instead. Hebei Bishi Steel (HBIS), one of the world’s largest producers, succeeded in acquiring steel factory in Serbia few years ago.

This year’s exodus for Lebaran holidays highlighted the growing travel by cars, thanks to completion of most sections of trans-Java and some sections in trans-Sumatra toll roads. This, however, has led to growing consumption of gasoline, which, unfortunately, is not fully sourced from domestic oil and gas production. Huge import of fuel ahead of this year’s Ramadhan cost the country’s trade balance dearly. Imagine if all toll roads being built in Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi are completed.

PT Chandra Asri Petrochemical Tbk (TPIA), the largest petrochemical company in Indonesia, continued to report a drop in both revenues and profits for the first quarter (Q1) of 2019. In 2018, its net profit crashed 43% while sales revenues fell 6.4%.

The Energy & Mineral Resources Ministry (ESDM) improves its control and monitoring over the smelter projects, to boost the value added of mineral mining in the country. The Government is set to impose sanctions, also to revoke the recommendation of mineral export, to companies that fail to build smelter within schedule.