Meneg BUMN: Garuda maskapai penerbangan terlemah di Asia

Taken from Antara News dated Dec. 31, 2005. So sorry folks, it is still in Bahasa Indonesia. I will do the translation later on as I will post more from Antara News.

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JAKARTA (Antara): Menteri Negara (Meneg) BUMN Sugiharto mengungkapkan maskapai penerbangan Garuda Indonesia sudah termasuk dalam kategori maskapai terlemah di Asia, namun ia membantah pemerintah berencana menjual Garuda seperti yang ditulis oleh sebuah harian ibukota baru-baru ini.

"Garuda sudah termasuk kategori maskapai penerbangan terlemah di Asia," kata Sugiharto dalam temu pers dengan pimpinan media massa di Jakarta, Jumat malam.

Bahkan, katanya, dalam statistik maskapai penerbangan Asia, Garuda tak lagi dimasukkan, karena dianggap tidak relevan untuk dibandingkan dengan maskapai lain, seperti Japan Airlines atau Singapore Airlines.

Ia juga mengatakan kinerja keuangan Garuda juga negatif, dan diperparah dengan utang perusahaan yang mencapai 845 juta dolar AS.

Meski demikian, ia mengharapkan agar di era persaingan global saat ini, dengan juga merosotnya pemasukan Garuda akibat kasus "Bom Bali", mau tidak mau manajemen maskapai penerbangan pemerintah itu harus melakukan transformasi bisnis, misalnya dengan membentuk aliansi atau kerjasama operasi dengan perusahaan penerbangan asing.

Ia mengemukakan dengan adanya kesepakatan mengenai "open air policy" di antara negara-negara di kawasan Asia, persaingan antar perusahaan penerbangan di kawasan ini akan semakin ketat karena satu dan lainnya bebas melayani jalur penerbangan di negara lain.

"Transformasi binis (bagi Garuda) merupakan keharusan," katanya.

Pada bagian lain Sugiharto menambahkan sesuai dengan Master Plan BUMN, telah ditetapkan untuk melakukan konsolidasi jumlah BUMN melalui proses restrukturisasi.

Melalui restrukturisasi, jumlah BUMN yang sekarang ada yaitu 158, akan menjadi 82. BUMN itu akan dikategorikan ke dalam tiga kelompok, yaitu "stand alone", "sectoral holding", dan merger.

Bertindak sebagai penasehat restrukturisasi adalah PT Danareksa Sekuritas dan PT Bahana Securities.

Russian firm close to signing satellite launch deal with Indonesia

KUALA LUMPUR (DPA): A Russian satellite firm expects to get the go-ahead to use Indonesia's Biak Island as its launch pad next month, a senior executive said on Tuesday.

Air Launch Aerospace Corporation President Anatoly Karpov said that Russia and Indonesia had already finalized a government-to-government agreement on cooperation in exploration of outer space for business purposes and would "initial" the pact next month, paving the way for the use of Biak, in Papua province, as a satellite launch base.

"It is already approved. It will be initialed in January, but the signing will involve a big ceremony with the presidents of the two countries," Karpov said.

"As soon as the agreement is initialed then we've got the permission from our government to go into official partnership with the Indonesian company -- PT Alai (Air Launch Aerospace Indonesia) -- as a joint venture," Karpov told Deutsche Presse-Agentur, speaking at the sidelines of the 2nd Russia-ASEAN Business Forum being held in Kuala Lumpur.

Plans to use Biak as a Russian satellite launch base have been on and off for years, partly due to the many changes in Indonesian governments.

"Biak is the best place for launching satellites on the equator," said Karpov. Satellite launches are risky business, and east of Biak is several thousand nautical miles of sea in case something goes wrong and the satellite plunges to earth.

The Russian Air Launch Aerospace Corp bills itself as a cheaper alternative for satellite launches, specializing in smaller satellites of up to 4 tons.

"The anticipated average launch rate of small satellites for the next 12 years may exceed 100 launches per year," Karpov told the Russian-ASEAN Business Forum, which drew more than 40 Russiancompanies and scores of Malaysian firms.

Efforts to boost Russian-ASEAN economic cooperation will be highlight at this year's annual ASEAN Summit, which for the first time will hold an ASEAN-Russian Summit on Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russian-ASEAN bilateral trade is currently negligible, amounting to US$4 billion in 2004.

AdamAir to launch Bali-East Timor route in 2006

JAKARTA (AFP): Private Indonesian carrier
AdamAir plans to start flying 15 new routes in 2006, including one linking the resort island of Bali with East Timor, a company official said Monday.

"Although we do not know when it will be opened, we plan to start serving the Denpasar-Dili route sometime next year," the public relations official told AFP.

He said that the new route was one of 15 domestic and international routes that the carrier planned to launch next year.

Adam Air, he added, is expanding its fleet and by the end of 2005 expects to have a fleet of 25 Boeing 737s of different types.

The carrier, which began operating in December 2003 and bills itself as a boutique airline, now serves over 30 routes, including flights to Malaysia and Singapore.

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Hmmmm, ailing state-owned Merpati Nusantara Airlines (MNA) will soon have a competitor to this somewhat lucrative route.

I was once told by a young Indonesian diplomat that the UN administration in East Timor once banned its officials to fly MNA for their trips to Bali due to "safety reasons" because MNA airplanes were considered not airworthy. So, the UN officials had to fly to Darwin in Australia (!)first then to the Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali........ Very efficient, no?

Do we really need to have an aviation industry?

What a silly question.

Those who say we do not need an airplane manufacturer are really suffering from inlander-complex. That we are not worthy enough to have such a hi-tech industry while most of our people are poor farmers.

Thosec critics are inward looking people. Some scholars related this to the agriculture, inward looking Mataram in contrast to the outward, maritime Sriwijaya and Majapahit kingdoms.
While it is true that PT DI; formerly known as IPTN, Lapip, Lipnur; was mismanaged and unsuccessful in its sales and marketing, it does not necessarily mean that we just abandon this endeavour.

I think those who oppose our very own aircraft factory never really get out of their comfortable palaces and visit distant parts of the country. How do you expect one to travel to the hearts of Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua?

Those who oppose it must think that we live in a continental country where you can just drive your car to every corner of the country. Watching too much Hollywood.

We are the world's largest archipelago with some 17,000 islands where land transport needs other mode of transport to reach the final destination. You need a ferry to cross the Sunda or Bali Straits. You must take one of PT Pelni's ships to reach Sulawesi or Irian Jaya. Or if you are in a hurry, take the airplanes.

While we already have a growing shipbuilder PT PAL, a strong aviation industry is surely a boost in our development and self-reliance.

I've never been to Irian Jaya or Sulawesi and only reached Banjarmasin. But I spent my childhood and teenager times in the middle of Riau jungle where my father worked for Caltex.
During vacation, we took the company's airplane heading for Java. In the airport, Pinang Kampai or Simpang Tiga, I saw people getting off and on small aircrafts belong to the Sabang Merauke Raya Air Charter (SMAC). It was in the late 1980s and early 1990s when no such thing as low cost carrier.

But the SMAC planes always full of passengers plying cities in Riau and other Sumatra provinces. If a friendly and more developed province like Riau still needs air routes despite the presence of road network, you can imagine what airplanes can do in Kalimantan and Irian Jaya.

This alone shows that we need a lot of airlines and airplanes to reach places still unreachable by land transport. Even when there is strong presence of land transport, the Bandung-Jakarta commuter air route still attract passengers.

Recently Lion Air announced the plan to buy 60 units of Boeing B-737-900, the latest series of the most popular commuter airplane. Can you imagine how much money can we save if the planes are made by PT DI? The provision of job opportunities?