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Power cuts turning investors off Indonesia - businesses say


Foreign investors are shying away from Indonesia due to chronic power outages, the chairman of the country's business association said Tuesday as Jakarta prepared for two weeks of blackouts.Businesses are bracing for millions of dollars in losses when the capital and its densely-populated surroundings experience rolling power cuts of eight hours a day for two weeks from Friday.The cuts are officially due to maintenance work which will interrupt gas supplies to two state-owned generating stations in North Jakarta, but analysts have blamed the country's crumbling infrastructure.'If the power cuts continue foreign investors won't come to Indonesia. They will choose China instead,' Indonesia Business Association chairman Sofjan Wanandi told Agence France-Presse.'As long as our infrastructure is not ready, foreign investors will think twice before they invest in this country,' he added.

Major blackouts have plagued the Java-Bali grid for the past six months, hitting big manufacturers as well as small businesses which are being forced to shut down operations and stand down staff.Wanandi said Japanese investors had lost 48 billion rupiah ($5.28 million) in the past two weeks due to power cuts in regions outside Jakarta.Rising demand for electricity has led to increasing numbers of blackouts across Southeast Asia's largest economy in the past few years despite the archipelago' s vast resources of oil, natural gas, coal and geothermal energy.The power crisis appears to be deteriorating even though only 53 percent of the archipelago' s 234 million people has access to electricity.

The government is looking for investors to help it boost capacity by some 30 percent to about 40,000 megawatts
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