A Norwegian energy firm, KF Gruppen (KFG), plans to invest US$300 million on the building of two hydro power plants in South Sulawesi over the next three years. The two plants will have a total capacity of 133 megawatts. KFG president director Knut Fossum said Thursday that the company would sign a memorandum of understanding for the projects with state-owned electricity firm PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) on March 30.

JAKARTA: London-based bank HSBC opened its 14th Indonesian branch in Mangga Dua, Central Jakarta, on Thursday to meet the needs of the company's customers in the area, one of the capital's major shopping centers. "We have a big business community in the area. That is the reason that we have been very keen to open a branch there," the bank's head of commercial banking, Khuresh Faizullabhoy, said following the opening of the new branch.

The Finance Ministry is preparing a package of incentives to support the government's ambitious program to produce 200,000 barrels of biofuel a day by 2010, a senior official says. Unggul Priyanto, the director for energy resources development at the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), said Thursday in Jakarta that the Finance Ministry was in the process of formulating two types of incentives to be offered to investors involved in biofuel projects.

The passage of the investment bill is set to miss the March 13 deadline as the government and House of Representatives still find themselves at odds over the issue of incentives for investors. "There is one final chapter that we haven't agreed upon, but it is the one with the most difficulties -- the incentives chapter," House Commission VI deputy chairman Lili Asudiredja told The Jakarta Post after chairing closed-door talks on the bill with the government Thursday.

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The government is making serious efforts to see that natural disasters and transportation accidents do not affect investors and tourists' to visit and invest in Indonesia. According to Coordinating Minister for the Economy Boediono, safety has been a factor that investors and tourists consider when visiting Indonesia. “We are trying to so that this does not have too much influence.