Bimantara ready to raise cars' local contents

JAKARTA (JP): PT Citramobil National, a subsidiary of the publicly-listed PT Bimantara Citra, is determined to develop its "national" cars with high local contents, even without an import duty and tax breaks.

"With or without such tariff and tax breaks, we will go ahead with our Bimantara cars," Poeng W. Lubis, a director at Citramobil, said here yesterday. He was referring to the government's newest automotive policy announced last February.

Poeng said his company will accelerate the increase of local contents for its Bimantara cars in order to benefit from tariff and tax incentives under the June 1993 deregulation package.

Under the package, sedans with 60 percent local components and commercial vehicles with 40 percent local contents are granted zero-percent import duties for the remaining components and the lowering of the luxury sales tax from 35 percent to 20 percent.

He said the Bimantara Cakra, with a 1,500cc engine and the Bimantara Nenggala, with a 1,600cc engine will have local components of almost 8 percent and 17.2 percent respectively when they are launched in July.

"We have planned to follow the June 1993 deregulation package in developing our cars," Poeng said. "However, after the introduction of the newest auto policy, which promises better incentives, we want to pursue it also."

The government announced in February to extend tariff and tax breaks to locally-owned companies to develop a national car. It then appointed PT Timor Putra Nasional, controlled by President Soeharto's youngest son Hutomo Mandala Putra, as the only company to develop the national car for the next three years.

It has repeatedly turned down proposals from other companies, including Citramobil, which wish to develop national cars to benefit from the tax incentives.

Poeng said that his company had planned to develop the Bimantara cars in cooperation with Hyundai Motor Company of South Korea long before the government introduced the national car program in February.

"We signed a memorandum of understanding with Hyundai Motor Company to develop the Bimantara cars on Dec. 1 last year," Poeng said.

The memorandum of understanding, signed by Chung Se-yung of Hyundai Motors and President Soeharto's second son Bambang Trihatmodjo of Citramobil, stipulated that the former would make its best effort to the latter to provide technology assistance to manufacture the Bimantara cars.

Hyundai Motors would also provide consent to Citramobil to export the Bimantara cars.

They agreed to develop local components for the Bimantara cars on a maximum level and establish engine manufacturing facilities in Cikampek, West Java, to support the cars.

Hyundai Motors also promised to train Citramobil's engineers to help the latter develop the Bimantara cars.

"So, you see, Citramobil is the principal company for the Bimantara cars, while Hyundai is our technology and component supplier," Poeng said.

Citramobil is 50 percent owned by Bimantara Citra's automotive arm, PT Bimantara Cakra Nusa, and 50 percent by Bambang Trihatmodjo.

Meanwhile, Vietindo Daihatsu Automotive Corp. (Vindaco), which is 39 percent owned by Indonesia's PT Astra International and PT Mitra Andasantika, launched its Daihatsu Hijet Jumbo, a 1.3-liter utility van, in Hanoi on Saturday.

According to a press release by Astra's vice president for public affairs Aminuddin yesterday, the Hijet Jumbo vans, which are modeled on the Daihatsu Zebra minivan in Indonesia, were assembled from completely unassembled kits imported from PT Astra Daihatsu Motor in Jakarta.

"We have so far received orders for 820 Hijet Jumbo vans, which are also to be introduced in Ho Chi Minh City today," Dirwan Widjaja, Vindaco's vice president, said at the launching ceremony.

Dirwan said Vindaco has been importing 160 units of completely unassembled vans monthly from PT Astra Daihatsu in Jakarta since March, to be assembled at its US$32 million assembly plant near Hanoi.

He added that Vindaco, which was licensed by the Vietnamese government to assemble and manufacture utility vehicles in April, 1995, is 33 percent owned by Union of Mechanical Enterprise for Communications and Transport, 26 percent by Daihatsu Motor Co. Ltd. and 2 percent by Kanematsu Corp.

"The car market in Vietnam, though still very small with an estimated market demand of only about 20,000 units this year, promises a robust growth in the coming years," Dirwan added. (vin/rid)