German Center waiting for occupants
TANGERANG (JP): After being open for 10 months, the eight- story German Center for Industry and Trade in the Bumi Serpong Damai (BSD) housing complex here has only attracted at least 16 businesses so far.
The center's president director, Jochen Sautter, said on Tuesday that management had a great number of companies ready to run business activities at the US$32 million building which has total rental space of some 17,000 square meters.
"But how could they start business if the poll vote is still being counted?
"The business community of course wants to see what the next president looks like. So, they're still waiting," Sautter told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a press tour at the state-of-the-art building.
Besides the 16 companies, supported services such as a post office, media center, restaurant, pub, and canteen have already filled spaces, bringing the total occupants to 25.
Sautter said the current tenants already represented 30 percent of total space in the building.
"It's a good occupancy rate at such a bad time," he said.
The building management, he added, "are still looking for some 45 or 50 other companies to fill up remaining space".
In March last year, six months before it was ready for occupancy, Sautter boasted 34 local and foreign companies had signed up for space and would move into the building at the end of 1998.
They included 22 Indonesian firms, 10 German companies and two Singaporean enterprises, he said at the time.
During the press tour on Tuesday, Sautter invited the media to see the business activities at PT LJ Elektronik Indonesia cable producer, a German Swiss business training foundation also known as Yayasan Bina Eksekutif, Senior Experten Service, also from Germany, and DEG, a German investment and development firm.
Ratna A. Sumrah, operations manager of LJ Elektronik Indonesia, a subsidiary of LJ Elektronik GmbH of Germany, said the firm moved to the German Center in November last year mainly because it was a convenient location with a more healthier environment.
"Here, we're free from any possible riots and most of all macet (traffic congestion)," she told the Post.
The company previously assembled products of mainly telephone cables at a factory in Kapuk, North Jakarta, after purchasing cable from Bandung and other related items from overseas to export to Germany.
"It was a typical factory that was unhealthy and had a crowded workplace and surroundings," said Ita, a senior employee at the three-year-old company.
"Here, we feel that we're working at an office instead of a factory," she said.
Sautter said the German Center, about a 30-minute drive from Jakarta, is designed for companies that want to manufacture, assemble and export products.
"All business activities can be done here," he said.
The center also provides information for businesspeople who want to establish ventures in local markets.
Erected on 15,000 square meters, the building was constructed from May 1997 to late 1998 by PT Econ Construction under the supervision of ICM of Germany. At least 50 percent of the materials were imported from Germany.
Sautter said the center was ideally aimed as a bridge between Indonesia and Germany and should be 75 percent occupied by German foreign investors.
"But we of course cannot drag them all here," he said.
He estimated that the building, selling at Rp 44,000 per square meter, would be fully occupied by the end of next year.
The center was inaugurated on Feb. 28 by visiting Baden- Wurttemberg Prime Minister Erwin Teufel in a ceremony attended by President B.J. Habibie and Germany's Minister for Economics and Technology Affairs Werner Muller. (bsr)