Hinduja Group ties up with Multi Eka Karma

JAKARTA (JP): The London-based Hinduja Group, which last year booked around US$15 billion in total turnovers, has chosen PT Multi Eka Karma, the investment holding company of the General Sudirman Foundation, as its strategic partner to develop investment projects in Indonesia.

"Hinduja is greatly interested in several of the projects we have been developing over the past two years," said Soetjahjo Hasnoputro, the vice president of Multi Eka Karma, before welcoming a 20-member IndusInd delegation here yesterday.

The high-powered business delegation, which is making a two- day visit, is led by Srichand P. Hinduja, chairman of the Hinduja Group, which has large stakes in oil, power generation, information technology and media communications, automobile and transport, chemical, pharmaceutical and banking.

The delegation, besides representing the Hinduja Group, also includes top executives of the IndusInd Group and Finolex Group and several other major Indian conglomerates.

"We feel honored to have been selected by Hinduja as its strategic partner because we are developing a number of projects in telecommunications, media communications, power generation, mining, lube oil and several other areas of infrastructure," added Soetjahjo.

The General Sudirman Foundation, the founder and owner of PT Multi Eka Karma, was set up in December, 1989, by the minister of defense and security and the armed forces commander in order to help the government improve the social welfare of armed forces members.

He said Multi Eka Karma has signed a cooperation agreement with the Hinduja Group as an umbrella pact for their business partnerships in various investment projects.

The cooperation, according to Multi Eka Karma's Chief Operating Officer Sunil H. Bharwani, will "provide us with access to technology, financing and the international market."

Multi Eka Karma acts as the catalyst for Hinduja to facilitate its investments in Indonesia's resources and Hinduja in turn serves as the catalyst for Multi Eka to gain an international competitive edge, Soetjahjo added.

"For example, we are preparing a $50 million lube oil blending plant at Cilegon, West Java, with a designed capacity of 25,000 kiloliters a year and Gulf Oil International, a subsidiary of Hinduja, will be one of the partners" Soetjahjo said.

The other shareholding partner in the lube oil plant is PT Elnusa, a subsidiary of the state-owned Pertamina oil company, which is also active in telecommunications and general contracting businesses.

He said Multi Eka is developing several other projects in cooperation with other international companies.

One of them is the diamond mining and jewelry manufacturing venture in Martapura, S. Kalimantan, in a joint venture with the B.Vijay Group, one of the world's largest diamond manufacturers.

"We are also exploring geothermal steam for power generation in the Jambi province in cooperation with Caithnness Energy," Soetjahjo said.

Multi Eka, he added, has also signed cooperation agreements with PT Satelindo, one of the providers of international telecommunications services and global system for mobile communications (GSM). The cooperation accords will establish local, multi-point distribution systems, the infrastructure, marketing and distribution of Satelindo's GSM network as well as a satellite backbone communications technology network. (vin)