Dump every other regulation, law or decree and return to the spirit of the 1967 Investment Law!

The Indonesian unit of Hong Kong-based telecommunications giant Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd. announced Wednesday the successful completion of the company's 2G and 3G user trials. The company said that the completion of the trials, with threshold levels defined for all key network and service parameters fully met, would pave the way for the company to launch its nationwide 2G and 3G services on March 31 as scheduled.

Publicly listed Bakrie Telecom (BTEL), a subsidiary of Bakrie and Brothers, reported net revenues Wednesday of Rp 607.9 billion (US$67.7 million) for 2006, a 149.4 percent increase from Rp 243.7 billion in 2005. With the sharp growth in revenues, BTEL, which operates a CDMA-based mobile phone service under the name Esia, booked a net profit of Rp 72.6 billion in 2006, compared with a net loss of Rp 144.3 billion in 2005.

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Cellular telephone operator PT Mobile-8 (FREN) will form a merger with its subsidiaries PT Metro Selular Nusantara (Metrosel), PT Komunikasi Selular Indonesia (Komselindo) and PT Telekomindo Selular Raya (Telesera), a report said. Publicly listed company PT Mobile-8 Telecom will turn into a surviving entity in the merger along with Metrosel, Komselindo and Telesera, FREN said here Wednesday.

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: Suwito Ardiyanto, Director General of Manpower Monitoring Development at the Manpower and Transmigration Department, has said that out of the 95.6 million workers in Indonesia, only 28, 7999,207 are registered as members of the Manpower Social Security (Jamsostek) program. This is despite that, based on State Decree No. 3/1992 regarding Jamsostek, every company is obligated to register its employees in the program.

I am reminded once again of S.P. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations". Even though he doesn't consider Indonesia or SEAsia a 'civilization' -- more an offshoot of Chinese or Arab -- it still applies. In the 80s and 90s, many American "nationalists" were going ballistic over the Japanese investing in American companies, land and other assets. However, there was virtually ZERO reaction about the much larger investments from Canada and European countries. You can see very similar reactions here.

Major mining companies issued a `white paper' Tuesday, calling on the government to retain the Contract of Work (CoW) system under the proposed new mining law if it wanted to avoid creating a major impediment to new investment. The 'white paper', which was issued by a coalition of major mining companies operating in Indonesia, will be submitted to the House of Representatives' working committee charged with deliberating the mining bill.