Local company to bid for power project

JAKARTA (JP): PT Inti Karya Persada Teknik (IKPT), a major private engineering company, will contend with a foreign consortium by bidding to construct a combined-cycle power plant at Tambak Lorok in the Central Java capital of Semarang.

"We can offer a price level 20 percent lower than that offered by a consortium of Japan's Sumitomo and General Electric of the United States," IKPT's president, Raysoeli Moeloek, said here over the weekend.

The Japanese-American consortium has offered to construct the 505-megawatt (MW) power project for US$394 million or around $756 per kilowatt.

The project is one of the three power plants offered by the state electricity corporation PLN under a repeat order scheme aimed at expediting their construction. The other two projects are a 982-MW combined-cycle power plant at Muara Tawar in West Java, whose construction is offered to a consortium of Asea Brown Bovery (ABB) of Switzerland and Japan's Marubeni, and a 855-MW combined-cycle power plant at Grati in East Java, which is offered to Mitsubishi of Japan and Siemens of Germany.

Review

Moeloek was quoted by Bisnis Indonesia daily as saying that IKPT's chairman, Mohammad Bob Hasan, will soon ask Minister of Mines and Energy I.B. Sudjana, PLN president's Zuhal and Coordinating Minister for Economy and Finance Saleh Afiff to review the proposal by the Japanese-American consortium and at the same time study IKPT's bidding.

"I believe we can compete against foreign companies in terms of quality and price," Moeloek said.

He declined to explain IKPT's offering price for the project.

IKPT, owned by a consortium of five local entities -- Nusamba Group, PT Wijaya Karya, PT Prama Matra Widya Engineering, PT Jasa Ferrie Partners and PT Rakintam Nusa -- has experience in the construction of large industrial plants. It is presently constructing a natural gas liquefying plant in Bontang, East Kalimantan, with a capacity of 2.3 million tons per annum.

A PLN spokesman, David Tombeg, told The Jakarta Post here on Saturday that "PLN welcomes IKPT's initiative to get involved in the power project."

However, he warned that PLN will never sacrifice quality to get a cheaper price for the construction of its power projects.

Tombeg said PLN is now still waiting for final studies on the three consortiums' proposals from a team assigned by President Soeharto to evaluate their bids. (fhp)