Kuwait oil firm to spend $300m on acquisitions

Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Wed, 02/25/2009 1:52 PM  

The Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co (Kufpec) plans up to US$300 million of investment in the Indonesian oil and gas sector despite slumping oil prices. 

Deputy managing director A. Naser Y. Al-Fulaij said Tuesday the company planned to realize the investment within two to three years by acquiring production facilities from other companies. 

"We may invest $200 million or $300 million in the very short term (around two to three years) in oil and gas," he told reporters after a meeting with Vice President Jusuf Kalla at the vice president's office. 

"We want to acquire more production and reserves in Indonesia. We're looking to make acquisitions . of two to three companies," he said, but refused to disclose the candidate companies. Neither was he willing to name the locations for exploration and production that the company was aiming at. 

He said the future reserves would vary in each company Kufpec would acquire, accounting for around 20 to 30 million barrels, "or more than that . millions of barrels". 

Kufpec, a subsidiary of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, has been operating in Indonesia for more than 20 years, according to Al-Fulaij. 

Kufpec operates in the exploration, development and production of crude oil and natural gas in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia, and participates in joint ventures with similar companies in exploration and production of oil and gas both as an operator and partner, according to www.kufpec.com. 

In Indonesia, Kufpec already has as partners, United Kingdom-based Premier Oil plc, the United States-based Hess Corporation and Japan Petroleum Exploration Co (Japex), according to Al-Fulaij. 

With its partners, he said, Kufpec operated in the Natuna Sea, on Bangka Island and Seram Island. 

He said the company would consequently double its daily production of 15,000 barrels a day. 

Al-Fulaij said the planned investment would be fruitful despite declining oil prices. 

"The oil price was $40 about three years ago. It was OK then. So, it's OK now," he said.

Indonesian Health Workers Unable to Fill Overseas Quotas Due to Poor English Skills

The Jakarta Globe, Dessy Sagita, January 23, 2009 

Despite a strong demand overseas for migrant health workers, Indonesian nurses and caregivers are unable to take advantage of the highly-paid jobs because they lack English skills, an official said on Friday. 

Mohammad Jumhur Hidayat, head of the National Agency for the Placement and Protection of Overseas Labor, or BNP2TKI, said after the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the agency and three health academies in Jakarta, that demand from the Asia Pacific, Middle East and United States for Indonesian health workers would continue to rise. 

“The demand for Indonesian nurses and other health care workers is skyrocketing but we cannot adequately respond to it because of a human resource shortage and language problems,” Jumhur said. 

In 2008, Japan offered a 1,000-person quota for Indonesian health workers but Jumhur said that the agency had only been able to send 208 workers. He also said that this year, there were requests from Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, United Sates, Canada, Kuwait and Jordan for Indonesian health workers. 

Jumhur said that from now until 2015, Japan would need 600,000 migrant health workers while Saudi Arabia required 30,000 health workers this year. 

“It’s such a great opportunity for us, but we’ve been hampered by the fact that many of our nurses and caregivers do not speak English or other languages,” he said. 

Jumhur referred to a nursing school in Cirebon, West Java Province, which required its students to learn Japanese. Of the 208 health workers sent to Japan in 2008, 44 of them came from the school. 

“If health academies and foundations provided English lessons, I guarantee that all our nurses and caregivers would be employed,” he said. 

Imam Dahlan, the Ministry of Health’s head of the empowerment center for overseas health workers, said that most Indonesian nurses were highly qualified medically. 

“We don’t really have a problem when it comes to medical skills; the only problem is a lack of language skills,” Imam said. 

In order to capitalize on the demand, this year the BNP2TKI expects to send abroad more skilled labor workers than in 2008, when only 36 percent of the 740,000 migrant workers were skilled. This year Jumhur said the agency expected to increase that figure to 40 percent. 

The BNP2TKI reported that through to 2015, there would be more than 2.85 million job opportunities for nurses in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe and the Middle East.

Overseas demand for Indonesian workers stays high

Astrid Wijaya, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Wed, 11/26/2008 10:47 AM  

The ongoing global financial crisis will not reap havoc on the demand for Indonesian migrant workers, particularly in Kuwait, the United States and Canada, an official said. 

According to the promotion director of Manpower Replacement and Protection (BNP2TKI) Endang Sulistyaningsih, opportunity for Indonesian laborers to work abroad remains high, with the U.S. and Canada in need of about one million nurses and care-givers. 

"I just came back from the U.S., and they said they are seeking up to one million nurses before 2020," Endang told Antara. 

Endang added that the demand for care-givers in the U.S. and Canada was on the rise due to the huge population of elderly citizens. 

"Opportunities for our citizens to work abroad remain high, but the biggest challenge comes from language proficiency. We still lag behind the Philippines, India, and Bangladesh, but only because English is an official language in those countries," she said. 

On its official website (www.Bnptki2.go.id), BNP2TKI said that, through a private manpower recruitment company, Kuwait had requested 12,000 nurses from Indonesia for 2009. 

"This is a hard work to deal with in 2009," BNP2TKI head Muh. Jumhur Hidayat said, after a meeting with the company's chief executive in Kuwait on Monday. 

According to the latest data from the Central Statistics Bureau there are 5 million Indonesian migrant workers across the world. The bureau has predicted the number will grow by 700,000 to 1 million next year. 

BNP2TKI data showed that the total combined remittance of migrant workers increased from US$3.42 billion in 2006 to $5.84 billion last year. In the first four months of 2008, the figure already stood at $2.23 billion. 

Canada is deemed the best potential market for Indonesian workers. Yonas Karyanto, the general manager of labor supplier PT Yonasindo Intra Pratama, said Tuesday that, at the end of the year, the North American country had requested 500 skilled Indonesian workers. The company has managed to send just 15 people so far, as the rest failed to meet the Canadian Embassy's qualifications. 

Yonas said Canadian employers would pay their Indonesian employees salary equal to that given to local workers. (iwp)

Kuwait invests US$300 million in Mamuju, West Sulawesi

Mamuju (ANTARA News) - A Kuwaiti company, Gulf Investment House (GIH), has invested around US$300 million in Mamuju district, Mamuju, West Sulawesi, through capital participation in the Mamuju regional company (Perusda Mamuju). 

The memorandum of understanding on the investment was signed by Perusda Mamuju`s president director Benyamin S and GIH`s president director Raseed Al-Badab here on Tuesday, in the presence of Mamuju district head Suhardi Duka and the chairman of the district`s legislative assembly, Thamrin Endeng. 

Raseed Al-Badab said on the occasion that his company was attracted to invest in Mamuju because of the region`s natural as well as human resource potentials that could be exploited to support investment activities. 

He said his company had had investments almost across the world such as Europe and America but because it was difficult to develop them the company decided to move them to Asia and to Indonesia in particular. 

"We are attracted to invest in Indonesia and in Mamuju in particular because most of the country`s population are Moslem and therefore making it easier for the company to conduct shariah-based investment," he said. 

He said he hoped the investment that his company had put in Mamuju would be successful so that it could contribute positively to the development of the company as well as the people in the region. 

Suhardi Duka meanwhile said that the US$300 million investment was an initial GIH capital participation as a contractor for Perusda Mamuju before it would later invest in West Sulawesi in line with the existing law. 

He said GIH would invest in the region for 30 years to process natural resources in Mamuju such as oil and gas, gold, coal, nickel, iron ore and potentials in the forestry as well as plantation sector. 

In view of that he said he asked Perusda Mamuju as a GIH partner to cooperate professionally and transparently with the Middle Eastern company. 

"We hope that the investment of GIH could empower the local people and increase local income for raising the living standard of the people," he said.

Mideast investment in Indonesia meagre: ex-envoy

The Peninsula, 9/22/2007 0:17:28

Abdul Wahid Maktub

DOHA: Investment from the GCC and the rest of the Middle East in Indonesia, which is the world's most populous Muslim country, is quite low, rues a former Indonesian ambassador to Qatar.

Abdul Wahid Maktub, who left Doha early this year having served as Jakarta's envoy for a little more than three years, was here on a brief private visit.

He told this newspaper in a brief interview late last week: "There are misperceptions in the Middle East about the safety of investments back in our country. The misgivings need to be removed."

Having recovered from the financial crisis of the late 1990s, Indonesia is making rapid economic strides. The economic growth rate has been 6.5 per cent and expected to shortly climb to seven per cent.

Maktub, who is practising as a legal consultant in the Indonesian capital-Jakarta now, said that he was on a visit to the region to attract investments back home, especially in the booming real estate market. "I have been to Saudi Arabia and now I am here," he said.

One of the biggest achievements to his credit has been that Dubai's real estate giant, Emaar, has agreed to make an initial investment of $800m in a massive city project in Lombok island, which is close to Bali. "Emaar has recently set up an office in Jakarta," said Maktub.

Here, he said he met Sheikh Faisal bin Qassem Al Thani, Chairman of the Qatari Businessmen's Association, and urged him to pay a visit to Indonesia to explore avenues of investment. "He has accepted the invitation," said the former envoy.

"When I had met Emaar's chief, I had only requested him to visit Indonesia. When he visited Lombok, the first thing he did was pray and immediately after that he told me that he was going to develop a city on this virgin and breathtakingly beautiful island," said Maktub.

Saudi Arabia's Bin Laden Group, he said, has given sub-contract for a 60-storey building it is developing in Dubai, to an Indonesian construction company and is quite happy with its work.

A lot of western countries are investing in real estate projects in Indonesia, but a disappointing thing is that the investment inflow from the Gulf and the rest of the Middle East is nil or negligible. It is because businessmen here have misperceptions about the country. There is so much idle money here and a lot of business and investment opportunities in Indonesia.

"Ours is a huge country. It takes eight hours to fly from the easternmost point to the west. You can, thus, imagine how big the country is, and so are the possibilities of doing business and making investments," said Maktub.

"We are adopting a practical strategy. We want businessmen here to simply visit Indonesia and the rest would automatically follow."

Also with Maktub was Gunawa Witjaksono, one of the top real estate developers of Indonesia.

Indonesia asks Kuwait`s Hemeco to start contruction of Selayar`s oil refinery

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian government hopes Kuwaiti oil company, Hemoco Kuwait General Trading and Contracting, would soon realize the construction of the oil refinery in Selayar, South Sulawesi, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Wednesday.

"We do hope the project could be realized soon as the existence of oil refinery in the eastern part of Indonesia would help the distribution of fuel oil in the region," he said after a discussion with visiting Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al Mohammad Al Ahmad Al Sabah at the Merdeka Palace here on Wednesday.

President Yudhoyono added the discussion between the state oil and gas company, PT Pertamina and its Kuwaiti partner were still going on as there were some issues to be settled, including the change of the company`s ownership.

"With the change of ownership, Kuwait promises to discuss it more intensively next July," he added.

The commitment to complete the project which has been delayed for 10 years is the follow up of President Yudhoyono`s visit to Kuwait on April last year.

The president further said this settlement was supposed to wait for the concrete settlement to make sure the volume of crude oil to be brought from Kuwait to the refinery later if it is built.

He added the government was still discussing on the tax`s incentive for the companies willing to build the oil refinery in the eastern part of Indonesia.

Head of the National Investment Planning Board (BKPM) Muhammad Lutsi, meanwhile said there were three options that could be given for the matter, namely tax allowance, tax reduction and tax holiday.

He said it would be discussed next July.