The business dialogue was conducted on May 30 in the SBF Center, Robinson Road, Singapore, and was attended by approximately 50 Singaporean businesspeople from various sectors. It was a follow-up to the SBF delegations’ recent visit to Batam, with delegates explaining that the city was still a very lucrative investment area in the Asian market.

During his presentation, Hatanto explained a number of breakthroughs by BP Batam to lure investors to do business in the city.

“We are very optimistic about the effectiveness of BP Batam’s breakthroughs, which include transforming the system of its investor service platform from manual to online. Examples of such online platforms are the i23J [three-hour investment permit issuance] and KLIK [accelerated direct investment for construction programs] services, which are highly appreciated by investors,” Hatanto said during the seminar.

While the i23J service seeks to cut red tape and make the permit issuance process simpler, the KLIK service seeks to provide incentives to attract direct investments for construction projects.

According to Hatanto, other facilities and services that seek to encourage direct investments include the host-to-host online port operation permit system, as well as the Geographical Information System (GIS) application for mapping technology conducted through drones to make land management more efficient, which has already been applied in Singapore.

During the business dialogue, Hatanto also explained numerous aspects of Batam’s economy, including the city’s economic growth currently dominated by the export-oriented manufacturing industry. He also said that in 2016 the city’s investment worth, based on Investment Coordinating Board data, amounted to US$471 million, dominated by investments from Singapore.

“Singapore has an important position as a country that has actively been investing in Batam within the last five years. A number of system improvements and transformations that have been applied by BP Batam could hopefully accelerate the process of turning Batam into a window for global investments in Indonesia,” Hatanto said.

The business dialogue was also attended by Indonesian Ambassador to Singapore Ngurah Swajaya, Kadin Singapore committee chairman Michael Goutama and Singapore Business Federation executive director Thian Tai Chew.

“We hope that the tight-knit bilateral relations between Singapore and Indonesia, which have been maintained for the last 50 years, could continuously be upgraded, mainly through Singapore’s joint working group forum, considering that Singapore remains on top of the list of countries with the biggest foreign direct investment in Batam for the time being,” Ngurah said.

Meanwhile, Chew said that Batam was still a lucrative investment destination for Singaporean investors.

“Batam has its own advantages, as does Singapore. If the strengths of the two countries were combined, they could bring massive results. Currently, Batam is still prime for Asia’s ecology of investment,” Chew said.

Michael added that Batam had additional potential advantages as an investment destination thanks to its strategic geographic location as well as numerous attractive facilities for investors. These potential advantages, however, could only turn into real ones if they were supported by a number of policy reforms by the central government, as well as by system transformation by BP Batam, Michael said.

“Hopefully, if both parties – Batam and Singapore – could continue their tight-knit cooperation in the business sector and the political interests of several parties could be put aside for a while, then Batam could serve its primary role as a window to global investments in Indonesia,” Michael added.

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