NCR inaugurates local subsidiary

JAKARTA (JP): Ohio-based Automated Teller Machine (ATM) manufacturer NCR Corporation on Monday launched the establishment of its wholly owned Indonesia subsidiary.

The company said the new subsidiary, PT NCR Indonesia, was established last year to provide better service to existing and future clients.

"Our final decision early last year to go ahead with the long- planned establishment of the Indonesian subsidiary, despite the crisis, proved to be a correct one," the managing director of NCR Indonesia, Wiranto Partosudirdjo, said.

NCR, whose clients are mostly banks, booked US$2 million in revenue in Indonesia in 1998, a considerable decline from the $17 million it booked the previous year.

Wiranto said 1998 was a surprising year in that NCR still received orders despite the country's banking and economic crises.

NCR expects to see 50 percent revenue growth per year in Indonesia up to 2003, he said.

NCR Asia Pacific director Keith Taylor said Indonesia had entered the beginning phase of its economic recovery and NCR wanted to be well positioned when economic prosperity returned.

He said before the regional economic crisis began in mid-1997, NCR had planned to focus its expansion on five countries: Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and China.

"These countries have been performing well in the growth of their information technology despite the crisis that hit some of them," he said.

He said NCR would soon introduce to Indonesia an ATM that allowed customers to make cash deposits. The system already is popular in a number of other countries.

Using these ATMs, depositors can withdraw and deposit their money with ATMs equipped with a chip which allows it to detect counterfeit bills, he said.

NCR, which provides 20 percent of the country's 6,000 ATMs, began 1999 with an order from one of Indonesia's largest foreign retail banks for at least 50 ATMs, Keith said. (02)