Bantul builds industrial estate to woo investors

BANTUL, Yogyakarta (JP): The Bantul regency in Yogyakarta province is developing a 55-hectare industrial estate in Piyungan subdistrict in a bid to lure investors into the regency.

Bantul regent Idham Samawi said the construction of the industrial estate had been 60 percent completed.

"The operation also depends on the handover of the power from the central government to allow us to manage the estate," he told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Piyungan is located on Jl. Wonosari around 12 kilometers to the southeast of Yogyakarta city.

Idham said the regency had obtained a guarantee from the state-owned telecommunications company PT Telkom and electricity company PLN that they would provide adequate facilities and services in the industrial complex.

He also said that the estate could be accessed from Yogyakarta via a wide road that could accommodate large trucks.

He promised that the local government would ease all the requirements needed by investors, including investment permits.

"No matter if they are foreign investors or domestic ones, they won't face any difficulties in obtaining all the necessary permits," he stressed.

He said there were already 15 investors, including three from abroad, who had expressed interest in building factories in the planned complex. The overseas companies were garment producers from France, Austria and Australia respectively.

Idham said that would-be investors would have to pay Rp 6 million per hectare for land in the complex.

He estimated that if the industrial complex were to be fully occupied, it would be able to recruit more than 10,000 out of the 36,000 unemployed people in the regency and generate total property taxes of Rp 1 billion a year.

Idham said that the regency had appropriated another 200- hectares of land in Pajangan village for an industrial site. The site will be developed when the first industrial estate has been fully occupied.(44)