The Government is Looking for a Foreign Investors to Invest in Propulsion Turbine Sector

To show attention to local machinery industry operators, government was looking for a partners, especially foreign partners, who is interested in making investment in propulsion turbine production in Indonesia. Currently, the government was expecting a serious response from Siemens to invest in small turbine production business in partnership with one of local producers, namely Nusantara Turbin Propulso (NTP), C. Triharso, Director of Machinery Industry, Directorate General of Metal, Machinery, Electronics, and Multivarious Industries, Ministry of Industry, told Business News.

We have made some approaches to other large, companies, such as General Electric (GE) and producers of similar products from China and Rusia, but none of them gave a response as we expected. So, we hope that Siemens will respond to serious request of the Indonesian government so that finally Indonesia will be able to develop propulsion turbine business that requires large amount of capital and quite sophisticated technology.

Actually, NTP has been able to produce the prototype of small turbine, but to develop it will require the support of large corporations of world-class. Meanwhile, NTP was only developing itself as a recondition industry, so the government encouraged them to produce small-scale turbine so they will finally able to improve their capacity as local manufacturer.

“It is difficult to find working capital and the market access because it is not easy for end consumers to trust the strengths of local industries, especially machinery industry so what they are looking for are well-known corporations, and finally, consumers are interested to buy the products. It also expected a technology transfer from world-class corporations, such as GE or Siemens”.

Data from Directorate General of Machinery Industry, Ministry of Industry
Machinery industry, particularly energy machineries consisting of boilers, turbines, and internal combustion engine, and other generators, in January-April 2009 recorded an export value of USD 117,567,830, decreased 24% from that of the same period in last year or USD 154,768,482. Viewed from import perspective, in January–April 2009, its import value reaches USD 936,131,806 or decreases 16.5% from that in the previous year or USD 803,233,647.