SBY asks ANZ to consider cattle industry

May 30, 2012, 09.37 AM | Reporter: Edy Can

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JAKARTA. President Susilo Bambang Yu-dhoyono met with executives from ANZ on Tuesday and made a very specific request: for the Australian banking giant to make cattle farming one of its focuses in Indonesia.

Among the members of ANZ’s delegation at the State Palace on Tuesday were ANZ Banking Group Ltd. chief Michael Smith and ANZ Indonesia chairman Joseph Abraham.

Coordinating Economic Minister Hatta Rajasa, who accompanied Yudhoyono at the meeting, told reporters that the executives gave an overview of the bank’s business in Indonesia and how it had supported the nation’s economy.

“In the meeting, the President raised cattle farming development in Indonesia, which has been significant in eastern regions. The ANZ executives expressed their commitment to take part in the sector, particularly if there were Australian and New Zealand investors,” Hatta said.

The exact value of investment the ANZ would disburse was not discussed during the meeting, Hatta said.

Deputy Trade Minister Bayu Krisnamurthi, who was also at the meeting, said that the ANZ executives had also expressed an interest in Indonesia’s mining, agricultural and infrastructure sectors.

According to a press statement, ANZ disbursed about Rp 1.6 trillion (US$171.2 million) in investment in Indonesia in the past two years.

The ANZ Group also said that it had increased the number of its branch offices in Indonesia from two to 28 in 11 major cities throughout the nation.

The group has also increased the number of its employees from 200 to 1,100 in the past three years, while increasing the number of loans disbursed to several state-owned companies, such as oil company Pertamina, gas producer PT PGN, port operator Pelindo III and steel company Krakatau Posco.

The bank said it had also participated in cultural preservation efforts by helping to restore Borobudur Temple in Magelang, Central Java, and had intensified its community development programs, such as by organizing financial education programs.

In April, ANZ Indonesia announced that it had agreed to disburse a loan of $65 million to Pelindo III to finance the expansion of its port facilities at Tanjung Perak Port in Surabaya, East Java; Tanjung Emas Port in Semarang, Central Java; Banjarmasin Port in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan; and Benoa Port in Denpasar, Bali.

The five-year loan, with an annual interest rate of 5.35 percent, was expected to help increase handling capacity at the four ports, where the turn-around time of freighters currently stands between four and five days.

A large portion of the loan would be used for the building of a new multi-purpose terminal at Tanjung Perak to cope with steadily increasing traffic in freighters, Suparyono said.

The project is part of the government’s infrastructure development program, called the Master Plan for the Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesian Economic Development (MP3EI), which was launched last year.

The MP3EI is aimed at developing 22 principal economic activities along six corridors throughout the archipelago, namely Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Bali–Nusa Tenggara and Papua–Maluku corridors.

Under the program, the government plans to launch 84 public-private partnership projects worth Rp 536.3 trillion this year. (Bagus BT Saragih/ The Jakarta Post)