PT Chevron Pacific Indonesia (CPI) is set to open gas stations in Indonesia following in the footsteps of other foreign firms, including Malaysia's Petronas and Dutch company Shell, an official says. Erie Soedarmo, director for downstream business at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, told The Jakarta Post on Sunday (4/3/07) that the government has issued a temporary license for the Riau-based company to operate gas stations.

Indonesia has urged Italy's major oil group Eni to explore for oil and gas in the Ambalat block. "We have asked Eni to commit for exploration in the Ambalat area to meet its contract," Achmad Luthfi, deputy chief of energy watchdog BP Migas told Reuters on Friday (9/3/07). Eni operates the Ambalat block under a production sharing contract with the Indonesian government signed in 1999. "Ambalat is our area. Eni has to explore that area according to its contract commitments," he said.

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 (8/3/07) in Jakarta that the Ministry was in the process of formulating two types of incentives to be offered to investors involved in biofuel projects.

Lion Air said the first of seven Boeing 737-900 ER aircraft it plans to buy at a price of $3.9 billion this year will arrive in April. The airline’s commercial director Achmad Hasan said the seven aircraft will be part of 60 Boeing 737-900 ER planes it has ordered from the US aircraft maker until 2012. Next year, eight more units will be delivered, to be followed with 12 units each in 2009 and 2010 and the remaining 21 units in 2011 and 2012, Hasan said, according to Antara.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Monday (5/3/07) it would sell Indonesian mobile operator PT Mobile-8 Telecom systems for a "third-generation" (3G) mobile service for $373 million, Reuters reported. Samsung, the world's No. 3 maker of mobile phones, said in a statement it would provide the equipment for EV-DO Rev. A, an advanced service that upgrades networks based on code-division multiple access (CDMA) 2000, by 2011.

Indonesia's largest mobile phone operator PT Telkomsel has added about 2 million new users so far this year, a company official said, signaling growth of about 6% from yearend levels, Reuters reported on Tuesday (6/3/07). Nirwan Lesmana, Telkomsel marketing general manager, said the company, controlled by state telecommunications firm PT Telkom, is optimistic it would attract 9.5 million new users this year.

State-owned asset management company PT PPA has announced a plan to sell its stake in 20 companies, including some banks, this year. The asset sales are to meet the company's aim to contribute Rp1.5 trillion ($166.5 million) to the state budget this year, PPA secretary Renny O Rorong told the Investor Daily on Monday (5/3/07). Rorong said he is optimistic the company would reach the target.

Indonesia has raised the base price for exports of crude palm oil by $3 to $490 a metric ton, effectively raising the export tax paid on CPO, a trade ministry official told Dow Jones Newswires on Wednesday (7/03/07). The base price for refined, bleached and deodorized palm olein will also be raised to $570/ton from $552/ton.

Bank Indonesia (BI) Governor Burhanuddin Abdullah said there is “not much to gain” from more rate cuts after the central bank board dropped the benchmark rate by a further quarter of a percentage point to 9% on Tuesday. The central bank cut its key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 9% on Tuesday (6/3/07), the 10th cut in almost a year and a reflection of the authority's confidence that inflation is under control.

AMBON (Antara): South Korea's LML firm will develop Jatropha Curcas, sp. plantations in Oma village, Haruku subdistrict, Central Maluku district, a spokesperson said. The company intended to develop the plantations as a pilot project to produce biodiesel for a power plant, LML chairman Choi Seung In said Monday. The decision to choose Oma village as the location for the plantations was based on the results of a field survey conducted last year, he said.

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta:Microsoft Indonesia will collaborate with more than 500 software vendors in marketing its Windows Vista software. This measure is aimed at reducing pirated software sales in Indonesia. Ari Kunwidodo, Microsoft Indonesia’s Director of Original Equipment Manufacturing, said that this program will be implemented in Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya. “This is Microsoft’s first program in grabbing part of the retail market,” said Ari last week.

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: Japan has offered a technological partnership for processing biomass into renewable energy, including the use of cellulose and lignin that are really cheap. “We have the technology and Indonesia has a plenty of its raw materials,” said Koatro Inoue of Japan Science Technology during the International Seminar of Renewable Energy at the office of the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), on Friday (03/09).

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: Taufiq Effendi, the State Minister for Administrative Reforms, has said he believes the bureaucracy reform that has so far been carried out is still far from what is expected. This is because there is not any unity in terms of perception and goals. “I want us to be in one perception in order to make a breakthrough,” he said when opening the National Bureaucracy Reform Workshop for Public Service Improvement at the Bidakara Hotel, Jakarta, on Monday (12/3).

Yoyakarta (ANTARA News) - Yogyakarta Governor Sultan Hamengku Buwono X said his province`s tourism had been seriously affected by the series of disasters that had hit the region in the recent past. "The series of natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, cold lava streams, whirlwinds and the crash of a Garuda Indonesia airplane has crippled Yogyakarta`s tourism ," Hamengku Buwono said here on Monday.

After nearly four months of delay, state-owned gas distributor PT Perusahaan Gas Negara's (PGN) US$1.1 billion pipeline linking South Sumatra and West Java finally came onstream Sunday. The pipeline will initially deliver 30 million cubic feet per day from a Pertamina gas field in Pagardewa, South Sumatra, to industrial areas in Cilegon, West Java.

Reform is never easy when it requires changes to an entrenched economic system. That is why broad-based reforms often require a crisis or perception of crisis, or at least a sense of chronic deterioration. It was economic crisis that brought down Soeharto in May 1998 and ushered in the reform era. And we are once again mired in a critical condition now, despite the macroeconomic stability the government often boasts of.