New Armada is a Magelang coach builder with close links to soehartoists, and conveniently close to ABRI's Military Academy. their only real experience is with building bus coaches and backends of trucks. not exactly high tech.
A local joint venture of four car body assembling companies and the Indonesian Car Assembler Producers Association (Askarindo) is set to start producing this November up to 1,000 bus chassis a year.
The chassis, to be branded Mobil Indonesia (Indonesian Car), or Mobindo, will be manufactured at PT Mekar Armada Jaya's (New Armada) assembly plant in Magelang, Central Java, says New Armada president director David Herman.
He said Mobindo would be the first local company to produce chassis with almost entirely local components.
New Armada is one of Mobindo's shareholders, while the others are Adi Putro, Chinese machinery manufacturer Dong Feng and Japanese car manufacturer Honda.
"Mobindo will start producing around 500 to 1,000 chassis every year starting in November this year, with the required investment to eventually reach US$10 million in total," David said.
He added Mobindo had so far invested $2.5 million to produce chassis for 9-meter-long buses with 33 seats.
"We're targeting Metromini *a public transportation van* operators and *other* public transportation operators in villages," he said.
"Our production is to meet domestic demand."
David added Mobindo had yet to determine the selling price for the chassis.
He said the country had long imported chassis from Mitsubishi and Toyota from Japan to meet domestic demand.
Around 400 car assembly plants churn out 65,000 to 70,000 buses annually here, David went on, employing 40,000 to 50,000 workers.
An estimated 3.4 million buses took to the roads in 2006, with a yearly growth rate of 44.4 percent, data from the Transportation Ministry shows.
David said that because Mobindo relied on "local components as much as possible" while local supplies remained limited, the government would reduce import duties on iron and steel, the raw materials for production.
"With cheaper raw materials, more new jobs are created and the real sector is revived," he said.
In response to Mobindo's request for incentives, the Industry Ministry's director general for transportation, telecommunication and informatics industries, Budi Darmadi, said, "The ministry will propose income tax incentives for Mobindo."
Last year, Malaysian-controlled manufacturer PT Asian Auto International (AAI) launched its locally built Komodo buses here.
Find Article by Date